


Subjectiverse DVD Bonus Extras

by potionpen



Series: Subjectiverse (the truth is what i see it is) [12]
Category: Fandom - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Meta - Fandom
Genre: Background - Freeform, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Interviews, Multi, Prompt Fic, Reader-Interactive, Shorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:49:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/potionpen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>ch 12:  Lions and Tigers and Crocodiles, Oh… what?</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In which the characters answer questions from all interested parties.  Includes:</p><p>* Who made James, Evan, and Reggie into pigs?  Was it Circe?  It was Circe, wasn’t it.<br/>* Why is Severus buying circular knitting needles?  Should we be afraid? (Spoiler: YES)<br/>* Who buys James Potter’s pants?<br/>* What kind of car would Lord Voldemort drive?<br/>* How does Severus really feel about beards?!?!<br/>* Is he insane, crazy, or merely surrounded by idiots? (Debate!)<br/>and many, many more!</p><p>A continuing effort made possible by you our readers, and by the letters SOS.<br/>Ask us anything!  (In the comments, even!)</p><p>Only be warned: if you want a spoiler you're out of luck, and if it's too personal Severus may slip veritaserum in your OJ to balance the blackmail potential.  (But not in your coffee.  He's not an <i>animal</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cobra and the Fer-de-Lance are mushy.  Ish.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Valley of the Shadow, Act I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566) by [nightfall rising (potionpen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/nightfall%20rising), [potionpen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/potionpen/pseuds/potionpen). 



> **Warnings:** an indiscriminate mix of background information and silliness.
> 
>  **Notes:** I would have liked to put this in some order other than chronological. Unfortunately I would have had to wait until Valley of the Shadow was finished to do that well and without driving myself crazy. So, er, no.

**Louise (AO3)** : Ok, I will play your game, though I really think Severus will resent you forever for embarrassing him like this.

Severus: _Correct_.

 **Louise** : "What muggle song do you most strongly associate with your spouse?"

Evan: (ignoring the word 'spouse' in probably-vain hopes Severus won't feel the need to emphasize its innaccuracy) It's Getting Better. ^_^

Severus: (smirk)) ...All The Time.

Author: (passing over the spouse issue to avoid a quarrel*) The question was about each other, not your relationship.

Evan: Oh. Ummm can I pick a song I could not possibly know? I don't actually listen to Spike's music anyway, it's noisy.

Author: Sure.

Evan: _Grace Kelly._

Severus: _Die Forelle_.  Especially the last verse, the one that always gets left out this century.

Evan: (eyebrow)

Severus: You're a dragonfish, Fisher King, not a snake. I said it in second year, still true.

Evan: You are NOT romantic.

Severus: Thank you and: Pardon me: I called you dangerously effective, you picked one that whinges on and on about about (scathing) _not being liked_.

Evan: No, no, you're completely missing the _whole attitude!_ (grabs arm and wheels him away, explaining expansively to Mr. Tolerantly Skeptical about a more cheerful Fuck You I'm Me stance than he usually manages, all the way out of sight)

(Yes, Evan enjoys sunshine pop. No, he is not embarrassed. He says it goes with his hair.)

_credits in order: Mama Cass, The Beatles, Mika, Schubert_

* at least until the next question

* * *

 

 **Ebony Starstorm (FFNet):** Does it annoy you that people always ask to quantify your relationship?

Evan: Tragically, the people who know we have one either think they have it pinned or are too polite. Most people just assume Spike needs a flatmate for the rent—

Severus: I DO AT THIS POINT NOT. I CAN PAY AT LEAST SOME OF IT GODDAMMIT. I COULD PAY ALL OF MY HALF IF YOU DIDN'T INSIST ON LIVING _TWO STEPS OFF DIAGON WITH ALL THE MINISTRY PRATS!_

Evan: I like it here. You lost the bet, Spike, live with it.

Severus: (grargh)

Evan: Anyway, it's good for business. —Needed a flatmate for the money, as I was saying, and had to find someone too laid back to kill him who wouldn't get on his nerves much.

Severus: _That's_ true. And they explain why you went along with it because?

Evan: Oh, I dunno, Narcissa wanted me to keep an eye on you?

Severus: The correct answer would have been 'I'm easy,' Ev. (smirk)

Evan: Mmm, that too. ^_^

Author: And everyone else?

Severus: Thinks Evan is as punctilious about blood politics as he ought to be. Ought to be seen to be, rather. Or, more accurately, that his head is in the clouds but at least _one_ of us has _some_ sense of decorum.

Evan: ...Er?

Severus: (raises a this-is-obvious eyebrow)

Evan: (frowns)

Author: And your answer, Severus?

Severus: It really is just Narcissa, but _she is enough._

Evan: (somewhere between sulky and plotting) Not really.

Severus: ...Not really?

Evan: (raises a this-is-obvious eyebrow)

Severus: (rolls eyes)

* * *

 

 **hwyla (ffnet)** : (referencing that this was all inspired by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan playing The Newlywed Game) I especially love that Patrick was probably closer on McKellan's 'spirit animal' than Ian was himself. He seems much more 'gazelle' than 'gorilla.' On a related note - my question therefore is: what would the other's animagus form be?

Evan: Quetzalcoatl! The kind where you cross his kind of cobra with a raven. Or a magpie. To keep up the black and white. But really a raven. Or a crow, because he's not that big. ^_^

Severus: o.O

Author: Animagus forms are always unmagical animals, Ev.

Severus: CORRECT.

Evan: Oh, well, if you want to be _boring_ and _accurate_... a _tiny little grey supersoft kitten_ with freakishly unnerving black eyes. Anna reeeallly long tail. It'd get caught in _everything!_ Mostly because you poked it in.

Severus: That's Reg, a kitten. With the colors switched.

Evan: No, he's more of a bunny. A brown one, very twitchy nose. _You'd_ definitely be a polydactyl cat, with the thumb-things. Maybe a Bombay, all black and shiny, still with black eyes, _very_ unnerving. But more likely one of those ones that looks like a wildcat and never gets so big it can't run up anybody's robes or trousers and claw their bits off. Only the fur pattern wouldn't have any brown or white in it, it would be either pure silver or shades of charcoal made for shadow-camouflage, I'm not sure which.

Severus: (not sure whether to be alarmed or have to fight soppiness) ...You have possibly over-thought this.

Evan: Nope! ^___^

Author: Did he get it, Severus?

Severus: His answer isn't especially jarring except _I'm not that little, for pity's sake,_ just because his family's made of TREES.

Evan: (helpful) It's more the way you keep forgetting food exists.

Severus: (dirty look.) But there isn't a right answer. I am a person, end of story, I will not be attempting this spell, _ever, I am not an animal._

Evan: (side-snugs him after moment of surprise) ...I left out the tongue, didn't I. The kitten would have an extremely long tongue.

Severus: (snorgles unwillingly) Oh, dear god.

Evan: Because it would be forked. That is why. Yes. ^_^

Author: ...oookay, and what about Evan, Severus?

Evan: Assume for the sake of discussion I consider it not a bad thing, Spike.

Severus: (surly) ...swan.

Evan: Wouldn't that be Narcissa?

Severus: No, she's an albino alligator. Or crocodile. Whichever is better at impersonating innocent floating logs. Birch logs, in her case, I suppose. _Snap!_ }:D

Author: And what do _you_ think you'd be?

Evan: Hmm... I was thinking a nice Arabian, if I couldn't be a flying horse. Sorrel, or blood-bay. A bird wouldn't be bad, and swans kick nearly as hard... no, if I were a horse I could take Spike riding and the kitten could sleep in a cozy little donut on my back. Mm.

Severus: (abject humiliation face)

Evan: (blithely ignores) Anyway, it's what I thought of first so it's more likely to be right.

Severus: (only mildly sour) I'm surprised you didn't think I'd be a thestral, if your mind's on horses.

Evan: Oh, no, I only _want_ no one to see you but me. Actually you're quite hard to miss, Naj.

_(for the record, references to two of these affinities were already planned. (g))_

* * *

 

 **Hello Is Anyone There [HATI] (ffnet)** : Have you ever been on a proper date?

Severus: No, thank god.

Evan: A proper what?

Severus: Muggle courting ritual.

Evan: (tragedy face) I missed out on a courting ritual?

Severus: (rolls eyes) One fusses over one's clothes, is exhaustively interrogated by the intended's most intimidating parent/squirms while the intended is exhaustively interrogated by one's most embarrassing parent, then leaves with the intended to engage in a leisure activity of some sort and probably consume food. Generally an effort is made not to return before the embarrassing parent goes to bed.  This invariably backfires, resulting in recriminations, accusations of illicit activities, and punishment.

Evan: ...Annnnd in the world of not-Spike, a date is...?

Author: Fuzzily defined. The leaving of the house to spend time with the 'intended' is compulsory to fit the definition, and the leisure activity and consumption of food are, if not mandatory, standard operating procedure. The leisure activity shouldn't be excessively sexual.

Evan: Are both parties supposed to enjoy the same leisure activity at the same time?

Author: Ideally. In practice, not always.

Evan: (considers)

Severus: (not actually legilimency) Going to parties doesn't count. That's work.

Evan: Quidditch?

Severus: There's supposed to be a romantic sensibility attached. Going to watch a game might count, chucking Bludgers at each other would not, I think.

Evan: Beach? —No, that's disqualified under the rules...

Severus: (quite red and very fast) WE'VE HAD LUNCH OUT AND SO ON SOMETIMES. MOVING ON.

 **HATI** : Now Snape, dates can be fun. Apparently.

Severus: _Protracted death from exposure on a frozen tundra with nothing to drink but antifreeze and all the rations are oversalted jerky._

 **HATI** : You can have indoor dates too, where you make an extra effort to spend an evening together doing something together like watching a film or cooking a special meal, I'm sure you've had plenty of those.

Severus & Evan: (look at each other)

Evan: That sounds like every night no one's over, except for 'watching a film.' What's a film? Is it you in sea silk? :DDDD

Severus: NO it's a much larger photograph of a play, which captures the whole of the play, with sound. I think in our case the nights where we get take-away would be more the thing, as they're the exception and it's done to save time from cooking.

Evan: Or toasting-things-on-sticks-in-the-hearth-because-Spike-is-a-brilliant-barbarian nights?

Severus: (pauses) Yes. Those qualify.

Evan: (snuggles) So I should _think_.

* * *

 

 **HATI** : Who would you kiss Evan in front of?

Severus: No one.

Evan: Incorrect, but we make sure Reggie turns around first.

Severus: So it's behind him. Anyway, that's always _you_ kissing _me._

Evan: (fondly) Chop-logic.

Severus: I'm a brewer, I chop everything.

Evan: (groan)

Severus: (smug)

* * *

 

 **HATI:** How did you tell your parents you were seeing a halfblood?

Evan: I didn't tell them, exactly. Mulciber sent Mum one of my impulse-drawing sketchbooks in fifth year. It was, er, there wasn't as much variation in the content as Mum would have preferred. So they knew he was on my mind. And then I spent the first half of that summer writing to him and arguing very hard that he should be thought of as a full-fledged wizard and someone it was reasonable to admit to knowing. And Cissy helped, and Reg backed her up when he was thinking about anything that wasn't Sirius. So they knew it was important, and they're not stupid. And then they _met_ Spike and (forehead crinkles) it was a bit odd, I'm not actually sure either of them liked him much, as such, but they did do a policy 180°. They didn't object at all when I wanted to move in with him.

Severus: (rolls eyes, sotto voice) That's one way of putting it.

* * *

 

 **HATI:** Does your father know about Evan?

Severus: (cool and detached) I doubt he's narked Mam off that badly since I stopped living with them. Not so badly he's been told baldly. He's been more or less sure I'd do more or less this since I failed to want to attempt to step out with Lily. Or possibly since I failed to get my hair cut to a muggle-respectable length once I could afford to do something besides keep it under control with the kitchen scissors. So it hardly matters, except I do expect that as matters stand he can pretend to himself when he troubles to think of it. But I really wouldn't know.

 **HATI:** Parents generally suck when it comes to relationships.

Evan: (glee) Spike's mum is terrified of me.

Severus: But not of your mum, who terrifies _me_.

Evan: That's not impressive, Spike. Narcissa terrifies you and so does _your_ mum.

Severus: Narcissa ought to terrify everyone, it's not my fault they're all morons. Mam, however, does not terrify me. She alternately has my respect and disappoints me beyond the ken of man, depending on what we're talking about. Which I gather is normal for parents. You're confusing fear with being raised properly by people tall enough to physically place one's three-year-old self nose-in-the-corner.

Evan: ...So you're afraid she'll put you in the corner? o.O

Severus: Certainly not. Are you afraid of your parents' elf?

Evan: (blinks) Afraid? Of _Linkin_? No...?

Severus: But you wouldn't take third helpings on pudding in front of him, would you. Or fail to send a thank-you letter. Or go out in the rain in uncharmed clothes.

Evan: _Noooo_.

Severus: Same thing. 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : How many of Severus's habits have you picked up?

Evan & Severus: (look at each other)

Severus: That's a difficult question, as we've been living in the same room since we were eleven. It's hard to say, with a joined habit, who originated it, or whether everyone developed it together as a fad that outlasted its excitement. I think he picked up keeping his hair ties in a teacup from Avery—

Evan: (appalled) Did I? I'll pick up a nice box tomorrow. Lacquer, I think, or colored wood, not enamel... yes, definitely something darker or softer-tone-matte would look better there.

Severus: (amused with him, ignores) I probably started drinking coffee first, for the flavor, but he's so hopeless in the mornings it only took him long enough to work out he could turn it into hot liquid ice cream to start drinking it.

Evan: I don't use _that_ much cream or sugar.

Severus: Anymore.

Evan: (makes a face at him) I suppose... it's normal to make sure you know who everyone in a room is when you walk in, but if you take up with Spike long enough you also start to pay attention to doors and windows and where you're sitting in relation to them, if only so he doesn't have to sit with his back to the room.

Severus: Which I don't know how you can tolerate.

Evan: Oh, I know I've got your wand over my shoulder. Besides, I don't actually have enemies. ^_^

Severus: (nose-wrinkly scowl) You shouldn't _rely_ on that.

Evan: And I have picked up his terrible illicit Muggle literature habit, although of course we don't admit to that.  Shhh.

Severus: He also used to use both eyebrows when he eyebrowed people before third year.

Evan: No, I didn't!

Severus: Of course you didn't. And no one ever caught you practicing in the bathroom mirror, either.

* * *

**HATI** : What's the most endearing thing Evan has ever done for you? Some small kindness that meant the world to you?

Severus: (gapes like an enormously affronted fish for a minute, brain overloading)

Severus: (pulls himself together)

Severus: (coolly) When we met, he competently got my clothes presentable without identifying me as the humiliating and humiliated party—not that it wasn't obvious, but he didn't make the fact unignorable—declined to attempt bullying not only as if he thought me too strong for it but as if the idea had not occurred, gave me a Slytherin Survival Guide, and though he wasn't any more interested in speaking with me than anyone else, used his influence where he could to have everyone allow me to listen to their conversations. For accent help, but I learned far more than that. I'm not sure I would say it was endearing; he was at that time a cold-fish prig who'd quite swallowed the pureblood line, though without any notable passion, and his motivations for what he did actively were rote dutifulness and trouble-avoidance. Indeed, he appeared to have a camera in place of any functioning internal equipment. If you'd asked _me_ about habits, I would have mentioned from whom I studied the unimpressed-and-disinterested look. It was unique behavior in the dungeons, however, and brought him to my attention, and it _gave_ me the world. Or a chance at being part of it. One I would not have otherwise had.

Evan: (helpful, putting arms around him) Spike doesn't really trust gestures, so we leave those to Narcissa, who can't help it. He seemed to trust me more after I more-or-less understood why he was upset about getting his snake name, though.

Severus: (leaning in almost imperceptibly) _More or less_ —? (shakes head) You are such a twitterpate.

Evan: (grinning) I thought I was a goon this week.

Severus: (hand up his arm, 'analytical' ~~caress~~ squeeze) Mm... plausible.  But that N's about eight letters too far along.

Author: (whispers) if you've been reading Valley of the Shadow without its prequels, please note that Evan's expression in the illustration in chapter 5 of  _A Key Called Promise_ would probably both surprise him and explain to him why Severus warmed up a little afterwards.

Severus: Also there was the complete lack of being put off by the hair, despite all the rumors Black had long since put out that it looks like this because I don't wash.

Evan: Er, Spike, I shared a bedroom with you. And a bathroom. I _knew_ you washed.

Severus: Didn't stop Mulciber, somehow. Reputation is more important than proven fact to most people. Especially prepubescents. Kids are _awful._

 **HATI** : 'it gave me the world'...Snape you are sometimes the sweetest man around. Then you go and make a first year cry or something but still. (debates merits of hugging again)

Evan: (knowledgeably) It's like wearing Muggle clothes in Knockturn. Anyone comments, it's an invitation to hex, make my day...

Severus: What is wrong with you two. There is nothing _sweet_ about it. I was speaking very-nearly literally; Slytherin would never have treated me like a full-fledged member, wizard, or human being without all that. I could say 'gave me the Wizarding World' if you like. It was my ticket in. I don't know where you bring _sentimentality_ into it.

Evan: Sure, Spike, everyone believes you. ^_^

Severus: (sulks. Had really thought he was getting away with a non-feelings-related answer there for a minute.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final stanza of Die Forelle that always gets left out these days (translation found Horton, 1988, Harper's Magazine, via wiki)
> 
> You who linger at the Golden Spring  
> Of a safe youth,  
> Contemplate the trout;  
> Recognize her danger, and hurry!  
> Generally she is missing only  
> Wisdom. Maidens, keep an eye on  
> That seducer with the rod! –  
> Lest you bleed too late.


	2. She Who Must Be Untickled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt was to ask questions regarding Hogwarts, but this was the beginning of no one paying attention to the prompts. (g)

**Psyche Girl (AO3):** what, really, actually, did make Lily fall in love with James? (Yes, I know these are meant to be Spike questions, but that is by far the most incomprehensible part of your Lily for me - probably because your main narrator finds it incomprehensible too.

Lily: I—well, it wasn’t one thing, you know? It was… well, for one thing, after Sev, you have no idea what it meant—well, maybe you do—that he finally started doing some growing up. To see someone who’d been unrelentingly _mean_ turn away from that.

And he did it partly because Sirius getting so out of control scared him into seeing where things were going, and partly because he saw it was important to me and why. It meant a lot to me that he changed for _both_ those reasons, that it was for me _and_ because he saw it was right.

And when he isn’t being mean he’s funny and he’s fun—er, don’t tell him I said that, his head doesn’t need re-inflating—and, let’s be honest, when he’s not being _utterly infuriating_ it is possible to notice he’s a quite fit bloke. (g) Sort of bendy, too; Seekers and Chasers are.

And he’s not complicated. He’d never, _never_ make excuses for two sets of friends to each other. He picks one side and sticks to it, and he says exactly what he means, he doesn’t imply things and go skittering around the edges of a promise. He can be extremely silly, but that’s a good thing in a father, as long as you can also rely on him, and I can. I mean, he needs stern handling, but he does what he says he’ll do and his instincts are basically good. I think everyone’s stupid and selfish and awful at sixteen, but the thing is, not everyone actually grows out of it. Someone who does is sort of amazing.

_A/N: This is her POV, she's allowed to be wrong._

 

* * *

 

 **Louise (AO3):** My next question is for thirtysomething Professor Snape, ahem: what the dickens were you doing for all those years between the wars, before Harry Potter arrived at school?

Severus: (stares) Er, my _job?_

Author: You may have to be more specific…

Louise: If our coy friend won't divulge what he was doing after hours or at summers, then we will just have to make wild assumptions. Or mild assumptions.

Severus: Oh, is that what you meant. There's no such thing as 'after hours' with a teaching job, especially if you have to do housemoth—er, housemaster duties as well and keep the infirmary stocked and do evening rounds because everyone else thinks they’re a joke. However, when I have sufficient free time that it can be spent in pursuits that aren't paper-bound, I do like to—

Evan: Be amazing? :D

Severus: (eyes him) _Challenge myself_ and experiment in the stillroom. And of course in summer it's much easier than during term to make it to potions, spellcrafting, and defense-related conferences and events, work on journal articles (one's own and eviscerating other people's), adjust the curriculum to keep up with advances (this seldom happens, but I live in hope), acquire the sort of ingredients that areobscenely expensive if one doesn't gather them oneself, and... generally keep up my... certifications and authorizations... things of that nature. (shifty) As I said: my job. The difference after my _other_ job resumed was that I got not less leisure time but less sleep.

Evan: And more cranky! XD

Severus: (smirk) Assuming anyone could tell the difference.

Entire Hogwarts Faculty: (flat eyes) WE COULD TELL THE DIFFFERENCE.

Severus: (blinks) Er… right then.

 

* * *

 

 **Louise:** Also, what would you say are your most and least favorite things about being Head of House?

As for favorite, fixing the complete state of what-the-fuckery (excuse his Greek) that Slughorn let it fall into, so that the prefects do not have to do his job for him, the kids feel safe, and a student has to be trying _really hard_ to fail academically. It's also nice that Horace is still around to be used as a shiny reward so he doesn't have to do too much networking bleargh himself.

Author: He says that his least favorite thing is being knocked up in the middle of the night by quivering infants with nightmares and homesickness as though sleep deprivation in a potions professor wasn't enormously dangerous. Actually his least favorite things vary by year, but you only asked what he says. (g)

 

* * *

 

 **Hwyla:** I've come back to the Byronic Hero question just so I can imagine that slit-eyed look again. Does he do pressed thin lips too? Sometimes I think he got it from Minerva, but more probably from his mam. Perhaps that look is why in "Boomslang" Minerva ponders about others suggesting she reminds Sev of his mother?

Evan: He does _tight_ lips, but not thin. When he Thinks You Might Wish To Reconsider he purses them, and when he’s upset they contract all around but mostly from the sides. It’s fairly subtle, though— _definitely_ from his mum—mostly he works from the eyes.

Severus: My mouth is thin to begin with; it wouldn’t be dramatic as it is for McGonagall.

Evan: (gasp) Spike, have you been looking at the Tartan’s lips?!

Severus: (dry) They are a quite accurate seismometer, so yes, as appropriate.

Evan: I am shocked, shocked, and very jeal—

Severus: You do realize the trolls have a running joke about your troll-cousin shagging her?

Evan: …Stopping instantly. But you’re making that up.

Severus: I am in fact not. It is, indeed, a _fanon_ running joke.

Evan: …Eeeyurgh…

Severus: (pats) She also resembles both me and Mam in essential build, a lack of nonsense—

Evan: (g) Ha.

Severus: —and hair color.

Evan: Also Spike was much more polite in her class than anybody else’s. Which is to say he only complained about her teaching technique, he didn’t actually correct her.

Severus: Well, I didn’t _know better_ in her class, because it was hard, because she was failing to teach me in a way I could understand. It wasn’t till _fifth year_ I worked out that you have to be able to visualize transfigurations in a way that makes sense to _you_ before you can do it, and _that_ was only because I got so frustrated I completely deviated from her instructions and thought cellular and it worked, which according to everything she’d said to date made no sense!

Evan: You’re sure it has nothing to do with the Dragon Glare?

Severus: Stupid bloody class, it’s as bad as Divination.

Evan: Because Potions theory makes sense to everyone who isn’t you, right.

Severus: (blinks)

 

* * *

 

 **Ebony:** How does Voldemort feel about Hufflepuffs?

Tom: Hufflepuffs? Taken as a group and cliché, anyone would want loyal and hard-working allies. But Lord Voldemort takes each witch or wizard for his own worth. All are welcome, so that they have true hearts that hold the true blood.

 **Ebony** : Do the Hufflepuffs know that?

Evan: (cynical) The ones he wants to recruit do.

 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : Poor Evan, no crazy [of his own]? Well, Snape definitely has enough to spare. Although is he insane or crazy? Debate!

James and Peter: Completely insane.

Sirius: Certifiable, nuttersville, really badly needs one of those jackets with the long arms.

Remus: (abstains)

Lily: The whole problem has always been that he's not crazy at all.

Narcissa: I wish it known that I am not agreeing with the mudblood.   That said, he isn't crazy, only jumpy, though if he were wealthy enough he would might relax enough to qualify for eccentric in short order.

Albus: A little nonsense now and then... you really should try it, Severus.

Tom: A little mad, perhaps, but under control and usefully so.

Regulus: (g) Definitely mental.

Lucius: Definitely.

Evan: Loony like midnight moonlight mine mine mine you can't have him none of you so go away. Well, Reggie and Narcissa can stay. Lucius, too, I suppose, if he doesn’t leer at MY BLOKE’s arse. It’s a nice one, I agree, but he doesn’t like it when you do that, Luke, sorry, because, as mentioned, he’s loony and doesn’t like being properly appreciated, no, I don’t understand it, either, this question was provoked by my _not_ having any crazy. Except Spike. I have him. He’s mine. Ha.

Severus: WHEN YOU’RE ALL QUITE FINISHED… (massive eyeroll) All I am is surrounded by idiots. And whoever gave Evan a Stream of Consciousness potion, _Black,_ can tell me which one it was right sodding now before I brew my own version, which will, I assure you, be considerably more potent, and administer it rectally.

Sirius: (matching eyeroll) That’d happen. Loosen up, Sniv, worked out well for you, didn’t it?

Severus: Lucius’s odd brain is between him and Narcissa. I have no wish to know about it. Now I do. This is your fault.

Sirius: …Come to think of it, now I have that image, too.

Severus: (smug) Karma has left roadkill that wasn’t me, I feel better now.

Sirius: …Did you just make a car pun? o.O

Severus: Don’t be ludicrous, everyone knows I never joke.

Sirius: O.o o.O =.- … I’m changing my vote.

James: What?! To what?

Sirius: ‘Totally screwing with us, the evil bastard.’

James: Oh. We knew _that_.

Sirius: Yeah, but now we know he’s doing it for _fun_.

Evan: (sunshine) See, I _told_ Spike you had more than one brain cell, Siri!

Severus: …Right, I’m taking you home _right now_.

Evan: YAY!

Severus: NOT LIKE THAT!

Evan: (singing) That’s what you say NOW…

Severus: I cannot credit that these so-called people think I am the crazy one. It utterly beggars belief.

Lily: Everyone raised by muggles says that, Sev. Well, usually with less alliteration and archaisms and kicked greyhound pathos eyes and more snickering.

Severus: (sniff) Shut up and slide me the Sudoku, wench.

Lily: (wags a finger) You lost the S-es.

Severus: Yes, well, all the s-synonyms lose the playful connotations in favor of stronger prostitution ones, so I thought I’d better not—

James: Damn right. (arm around Lily’s shoulder and looks fierce and manly, other hand on his wand)

Severus: —as Mam would apparate wandless from Lancashire and Look At Me Disapprovingly. What? She’d just know. _What?_

Sirius: Can I change my vote back?

Remus: (pats him)

 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : What does Regulus think of the house elf heads?

Reg: Er, well, they're a little er for this century and er, maybe they shouldn't actually be actual heads in the hall anymore? But I understand it. It's like Roman death masks. It shows the living elves that we appreciate them and they'll never be forgotten while the family remains. That's important for them to remember, especially while they're being disciplined. Um, I know they look like hunting trophies, but that's really not what it's about. It's _pride_ for them. Even visitors who come in just for a minute have to see which of them have been the most honored. I've been sort of thinking, though, that maybe if it wouldn't break Kreacher's heart too much we could maybe replace them with statues. Or portraits. Or at least have them bronzed. Because, er, they really do look like hunting trophies and no one understands anymore and it sort of makes a really horrible impression and the visitors don't just look down on the family for it, they pity the elves, so it's sort of a lose-lose situation all around. Only, I think it really would break Kreacher's heart. It's his _dream_ to have his head up there after he dies, and he deserves to get it if that's what he wants... so I don't know...

 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : In class, do you prefer an intelligent Ravenclaw or a hard working Hufflefpuff?

Minerva: I prefer a hard-working Ravenclaw and an intelligent Hufflepuff. Provided neither of them is too much of a clever-dick, like the Weasley twins, Severus Snape, Sirius Black, or Zacharias Smith, all of whom combined moderate to excessive intelligence with extremely hard work at whatever they felt merited the effort and even more extreme wearisomeness.

And one might point out that neither intelligence nor hard work, even combined with a pleasant temperament _and_ biddableness, rules out insanity, inappropriate experimentation, or the inability to limit oneself to the confines of the assignment and keep to the point. Give me a Dean Thomas, Susan Bones, Michael Corner, or Emmeline Vance who'll grasp the assignment in a reasonable amount of time and simply do it, thank you.

Not that the other sorts don't have their respective charms, but I find them much more charming outside the classroom, when I don't have to cope with their essays. I have three jobs and a schedule, you do realize?

 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : Did the sorting hat give you a choice of houses too?

Albus: (twinkle) I believe my faculty have discussed this at some length as a result of someone else's question. Lemon square, my dear? They've got shortbread on the bottom, they're very good.

 

* * *

 

 **Ebony:** Would Dumbledore have been Slytherin if he hadn't requested differently?

Severus: Yes. Yes, he would. There is no question but that he would. This is obvious to everyone.

Minerva: Severus, really! Professor Dumbledore is the consummate Gryffindor. I shall have to have a word with Binns about covering the Grindelwald Wars.

Severus: The ones where he kept Britain out of the action for 40-odd years for no reason he was pleased to share with the rest of the world and then made sure no one actually witnessed that Grand Spectacular final duel with his old friend, you mean? I'm not criticizing, you understand, it's only that his information-sharing allergy is rather serpentine. I'll stop there but, please note, I don't have to.

Filius: Granted, Severus, but don't be greedy. He could have come to my House, too. Albus is an innovative genius, after all, and a polymath, and a very clever strategist.

Severus: The benevolent man's Moriarty, in fact.

Minerva: ...That was an insult, wasn't it.

Filius: (eyes Severus) (judicious) Only superficially.

Severus: I'm not denying his intellect. But if you want success and respect, which no one denies he did, Gryffindors are those to whom these things are most freely given. Sorting Gryffindor is what any _really_ canny Slytherin would do.

Minerva: (GLARES) Then why didn't you?

Severus: Because you don't teach Gryffs to think carefully before making dunderheaded, glory-grubbing, suicidal decisions, and I wanted to learn to.

Pomona: This is rather a waste of time, chaps. The Hat sent him where it sent him.

Severus: (g) You're just saying that because your House didn't get him, either.

Pomona: (looks between his and Minerva's stress lines and, oh, all of DH)

Pomona: (not unkindly) Just between the four of us, my lad, my House didn't want him.

 

* * *

 

 **HATI** : Do certain houses get more of certain types of injury than others? Ravenclaws experimenting/Gryffindors with quidditch injuries, that sort of thing.

Poppy: Oh, goodness, yes. Although it's different with every year in every house as well. For example, Harry Potter and Collin Creevey's Gryffindor classes are all quidditch injuries and burns from Mr. Finnegan and Mr. Longbottom's disasters, and his father's kept coming in with extra limbs and bits in the wrong places or turned to animal parts or vanished or doing unnerving things when they moved. Sometimes I think Severus was dueling as much with Filius and me as he was with the boys. Then, Cho Chang and Luna Lovegood's classes are also mainly from Quidditch, mixed with animal bites and burns and so on, but *their* parents' classes largely had experimental problems. Mostly, in their particular parents' cases, from trying to mix Western and Eastern magical theory, as I recall. They don't mix, just so you know. Completely different way of thinking about everything.

* * *

**HATI** : Do you clean inside the houses?

Filch: Nah, the elves do that. 'Xcept when know-it-all brats naff 'em off leaving hats under piles of trash. Then the rest of the brats can fend for themselves till they learn her better.

* * *

 

 **HATI** : Who chooses the prefects and head boy/girl? Do you or do their heads of houses?

Dumbledore: I suppose they would give some weight to an opinion I expressed, but I don't interfere in the way my Heads run their Houses. If I hadn't trusted them with the children's care, I wouldn't have given it to them.

Severus: He expresses opinions ALL THE TIME. And weight certainly is given to them. To give him his due, I don't think he intends to actually affect the decision-making. Usually.

Minerva: No, of course he doesn't. It's natural that he should notice when certain students are doing well.

Severus: It's not natural at all, given he hardly talks to any of them except when w—they're in trouble. Someday they're going to figure out all the way he spies and there's going to be a massive bonfire and then everyone whose ancestors had a portrait burned is going to oh god.

Minerva: Have a cup of tea and cease to be ridiculous this instant or I shall go over the last Gryffindor/Hufflepuff game point by point very loudly.

Severus: (horror, obedience, tea)

 


	3. Peter and the Cobra

**Louise:** I do have a question for Peter and Severus (and the Blacks, I suppose). Which of you lot knew that Peter was seeing Voldemort during the first war? If not then, when did you find out?

Author: LOL, I'm gonna blame the cold medicine for you just asked me to, you know, tell you the rest of the plot... but here’s what I can give you:

Peter: What? I'd never have anything to do with You Know Who! I mean, other than (gulp) if Dumbledore sent me on a mission, I guess.

Reg: I know I had to soften him up for Lucy Wilkes, but no one actually tells me anything. (not quite a sulk)

Evan: You're not supposed to need people to tell you things, kitten. No one tells me or Narcissa anything, either, we had to figure it out from how Lucy brought him along to your dinner party.

Severus: What’s this about the overfed muskrat?

Evan: NOTHING LALALALALALALALA!

Severus: ....riiiiight..... (eyes Evan suspiciously but goes back to potions journal. Is sure someone will allow him to know when he's supposed to know, or is still not supposed to but ought to anyway.)

* * *

 

 **Louise** : Severus, how did you manage to not, ah, accidentally dispose of Peter when he was placed as your roommate, now knowing his role in Lily's murder?

Severus: Despite popular opinion, that is, more or less, what occlumency is for: controlling one’s own mind. At least, that's how I use it. Blocking legilimency is one effect; it’s not the way to think about it.

In any case, Pettigrew may have thought that he was there to spy on me, but it was entirely clear to me that he was placed with me at least in part, if not primarily, for genteel and prolonged torture as punishment for being irritating. He may be unusually successful as a sneak for a Gryffindor, but that doesn't mean he understands Slytherin.

I wasn't allowed to actually drown him in the fondue pot, of course, as he was theoretically in moderate favor and that would have made it look as though being in favor was worthless. However, the day I have to resort to physical pain to distribute the death of a thousand cuts to a wet, fumbling Gryff who already despises himself and knows the feeling is universal...

Narcissa: (pats his hand) In other words, he's a marshmallow.

Severus: (annoyed) In other words, I think death is an end to pain.

Evan: O.O (apparates to '96 and steals all the sharp objects and potion... ingredients and, and, and, basically everything in the castle...!)

Narcissa: (pats him)

* * *

 

 **Louise** : Also - I just read the notes [on [chapter 50](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/4627731)], and I'm confused - did I miss a major plot point? Who has given whom a love potion? (Lips pursed and eyes preemptively brimming over with disillusioned tears.)

Evan: (rolls eyes) No one has given anyone a love potion, for Merlin's sake.

Severus: (brightly) Although I wouldn't put it past Narcissa to have slipped us both one to make sure we didn't break up her support system attaching ourselves to Other People.

Evan: (glares) You. Would. Have. Noticed.

Severus: (grinning) Maybe I didn't dare cross her.

Evan: _Not! Funny!_ Since when do you think love potions are less than monstrous?!

Severus: Since never. But the idea that they can be blamed or credited for relationships that a pensieve would prove to have built up naturally over time based on pre-existing liking and trust proven justified is beyond laughable. They provide affectionate obsession and/or lust, with mooning and/or stalking. The signs of a potion-induced relationship are very obvious and do not include you thumping me all the time as if we were still adolescents in the Slytherin dorms, or the affected party being able to hold down a job if continually dosed over time, or anybody insulting anybody on a regular basis or blithely ignoring anyone's strongly-felt opinions and expressed desires in important matters like rent. Tyrannosaurus Musclehead.

Evan: (g) You _lost_ , Spike, get over it.

Severus: (makes face) Lockhart just assumes what many people probably do assume because he, like them but more so, is an idiot, and may never have been in contact with reality or human-person emotion in his life. Furthermore, I strongly suspect he's not above using them himself and may even have had them used on him, and he's certainly been slapped down by enough mothers to be baffled by the fact that yours tolerates me. He cannot understand it as a natural happenstance and therefore assumes dark magic.

Evan: I don't actually understand that, either. Not that I'm complaining. Did you just admit you like and trust me? Out loud? In public? :D

Severus: (sniff) I said no such thing. No nouns or pronouns were used. Obviously I meant you.

Evan: I _know_ you did! :D

Severus: (glare) You know what I mean.

Evan: Yes, I do. :D

Severus: ...(sigh) Yes, I suppose you do.

Evan: ^____^


	4. Driving Along in My DarkLordMobile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...look, idk, I don't know that many songs about cars, ok?
> 
> Prompt: Everyday life.  
> I still know this because someone mentioned they were ignoring it. :D

**LittleBabyDamien** : I want to ask the same questions of several of our characters, each one relating to Muggle culture in a specific decade. Tom, focus on the fifties, Severus, on the sixties, and Peter, on the seventies. One: what music typifies the era for you? Any specific songs that stand out to you? Two: What car would you drive, if you had no limitations or restrictions? Three: what major news event, political for preference, stands out from that era? Or, if you prefer, what was the first international event that you remember, regardless of decade?

**Tom**

1\. (loathing) Christmas music. Sometimes one couldn't get it out of one's head in *June.* And that loathsome treacly crooner Sinatra. I think he took lessons from Binns. I'd swear his every song went on quite as long as one of those lectures.

2\. CRUCIO! As if Lord Voldemort would stoop to filthy Muggle transportation!

3\. Whether you call it World War II or the first sallies of the Grindelwald War, the first international event I remember is almost certainly the same one everyone my age does. It made quite an impression, particularly on London. So thoughtful of the school to insist on sending us home every summer, when children with parents were being sent to the countryside in droves.

_A/N: sorry about that. Did not intend cursing the readers to be a possibility, but that was his response..._

**Peter**

1\. I guess it's not very creative, but everyone in Gryffindor listened to the Beatles a lot. Later on Sirius got into The Who and the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols, er, really anything he thought would annoy his mum, I think, especially if they had good t-shirts, so we heard a lot of hair band stuff. But if you want to ask about typifies, I'd have to say sitting around stoned trying to sing Hey Jude in the same key.

2\. Um, I don't know a lot about cars. Sorry. Sirius is the one who likes engines and things. Sometimes he says something is the Ferrari of whatever kind of thing it is, though, like it's a really good thing to be, so I guess maybe that?

3\. The Indian Emergency. Everyone was talking about it, because it wasn't voluntary for squibs to get sterilized like it was for muggles, and they were sterilizing kids who hadn't shown magic yet but still had a few years before other countries would have written them off.

**Severus**

1\. There was a local band, A Glass Menagerie. It mostly did covers, but they had a few of their own songs, and Bowie may have heard one or two of them, it's thought. If there was one thing the other boys in the area thought I was good for, it was sneaking them into cinemas and concerts and the like, so I ended up hearing a lot of them, and Lily liked them. I didn't think about whether I liked them or not, but I liked _going_ , especially with her. I listened to one of their songs, I Say Goodbye To Me, an embarrassing number of times a few years later, when I was... coming to some conclusions. They released it in '69, so I suppose you could say that stands out from the decade.

But I think really I'd say... Da knew a lot of music hall songs from his mam, he used to whistle them when things were good. When he was in a quite good mood he'd sing Two Lovely Black Eyes at Mam. It was about the inevitability of getting hit in the face over politics if one chooses to be loud about one's views, but she knew what he meant.

2\. I'm quite attached to my Silver Arrow, thank you. If I had to have a car, though, I suppose I'd be hard-pressed to choose between whichever was safest, with blind-spot coverage and that computer that tells you if you’re going to hit something low behind you, and a Tesla. One of the benefits of being a wizard is knowing you're not adding to the pollution problem.

Additionally, the future is here and I'm still waiting for my jet pack. (smirks because he doesn't need one)

3\. There may not have been one particular news event so much as being constantly aware of the Troubles and the murders over Manchester way... although Da _really did not ever shut up_ about Neil Armstrong or the heart transplant success in South Africa. For about five years.

* * *

 

 **Very Small Prophet:** After reading Lily's answer, I have a question for James: DID you change? If so, in what way? And why?

James: I guess I must have, as I'm not going to completely blow that off. ;D

(Crickets)

J: (annoyed no one is amused) I dunno if people really change, but you know how it is. You get older, the adults hide less of the problems from you and you realize more and more that they're _your_ problems, and... they start to feel difference.

Frinstance, Mum and Dad raised me to hate the Dark Arts and I always did, but you hear about things happening to your friends' families, so you start to read the newspapers, and... hating them was always _real,_ but you start to know _why,_ and it gets stronger, sort of deeper.

And you realize things like, your friends are having problems that are easily solved, no problem, all you have to do is throw money at it and poof. Only nobody would accept that. So you've got to treat the life problems like they're targets you want to prank and be clever about it, not get caught.

And the other part of growing up where you have to accept that even your best friends, even your wife who's ordinarily brilliant, isn't going to agree with you about everything because she's stubborn, and actually you rather like that about her so you have to live with it, so you have to find ways to work around the disagreements if you're not going to change your mind either, being right.

Author: Actually, James, when people ask you that what they mostly want to know is did you stop going after Snape.

J: (disgusted noise) I don't know why everyone's thinking about him all the time. I mean, I do because I'm _keeping an eye on him because he's dangerous,_ but he's not _interesting_. Fine, mostly, yeah. Well, less. Like I said, I keep an eye on him, and sometimes I make sure he knows it so he doesn't think he can sneak around and get away with anything, but not like at school. If I kept a really tight leash on him Padfoot would want in, and one of those problems I mentioned earlier is that it's sort of my job to keep Sirius from going overboard. He gets, er, enthused about things. I try to encourage him about his bike.

* * *

 

 **Hwyla:** I think I may have commented on this before (and it doesn't really 'fit' 'everyday life), but has Lily ever been informed about the 'Werewolf Incident' = specifically how the reason Sev went there (in your story) was because he thought she was there? I'm not even sure she knows Remus is a werewolf in this story. I feel pretty sure that she didn't know in canon.

Author: The answer to your question as asked is a straightforward 'no,' and therefore Lily can't hear that question to answer it because her brain would explode. However, she can answer the rest of the comment.

Lily: I do know he's a werewolf _now_. They told me as a sort of early wedding present, sort of the way witches and wizards tell muggles they're going to marry that they have magic. As a trust thing, although it's not really all that much of a trust thing when you know obliviate, is it?

But I'm sure Sev didn't know at school. I know he guessed, but he couldn't have _known_. If he'd known he would have told me. I mean, obviously Remus would bite his tongue and kill himself before he hurt a fly, but _Sev_ didn't think that, so he would have thought Remus was really, really dangerous. And if he knew and he didn't tell me, well... I know we were rocky and he was hanging out with people who were trying to convince him I was less human than, well, werewolves, but I'm sure he was never _that_ bad a friend to me, right?

Severus: I... what... no... that's just... TOO MANY KINDS OF NO. (bangs head repeatedly on wall)

Sirius: Nice one, Buttercup! (takes picture for posterity)

Remus: (tries to sidle away to possibly Calcutta where no one has ever met him)


	5. Mysterious as the dark side of the mole sauce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which readers actually indulge my prompt, in which I begged for crack. :D

**Louise** : What condiment are you? (Possibilities: HP Sauce, ketchup, Grey Poupon, mango chutney, tzatziki sauce, sriracha, soy sauce, organic basil olive oil, chipotle mayo, blah blah blah)

Author: Who you askin—

Gilderoy: I don’t need condiments! Or cosmetics! I’m perfect as is, I only want to put out a line of hair care products to help other, SAD people, like poor Severus! WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT?!!!!

Everyone: ….

Lily: The lady doth protest—

Severus: Lily. No.

Lily: No? Yes he does.

Severus: Yes, but no. Everyone was thinking it already. So you don’t say it. No. See, this is why I told you you needed to be in Slytherin, you’re nearly as bad at this as I am.

James: Actually, no, because when she’s lame it’s adorable and when you are it’s pathetic and creepy and weird.

Evan: I swear on Merlin’s staff the entire readership disagrees with you.

Author: YOU WERE COLLECTIVELY ASKED A QUESTION… and while you’ve been squabbling, Lucius has given Gilderoy gangrene in his face fighting to get to Wikipedia first to claim the classiest sauce.

Everyone: Are we meant to care?

 

Lucius: (cleaning off poisoned nails with his wand) I’ve decided the feather boa can have hollandaise or even béarnaise if he really wants them. I—

Gilderoy: No, no, Lucius, they’re all yours! It’s only natural that I’d be _relish!_ (roguish wink)

Crickets: (chirp, chirp, whee!)

Lucius: (presses lips together then mightily ignores) I would be beurre noir.

Narcissa (née Black) : (blinks, shocked little giggle, smacks him on the arm)

Lucius: (smirks) And you, my dear?

Narcissa: Do you recall the clotted cream infused with honey-saffron brandy Severus gave us for our wedding breakfast?

Lucius: (winces in memory of hangovers past) I remember it had a kick like an Abraxan.

Narcissa: (ducks her head modestly with demure smile and fluttery eyelashes)

 

Pomona: Minerva would be Scottish whiskey sauce, wouldn’t you? (g)

Minerva: (rolls eyes) If I were limited to regional cuisine I think it would be Dundee marmalade, thank you, nothing so cloying. But I should think a nice tart raita, in fact, and I’m sure my students would agree. (smug) And you’d be salt.

Pomona: Mercy, no, that would kill all the plants. I fancy a nice port wine mushroom sauce. Brown, not tomato. Cherry preserves for you, Filius?

Filius: To eat, any day! But no, I think a garlic-and-chives sour cream sauce. Very refreshing. With some of those pixie stix sprinkled over the top, just for fun.

Everyone: …

Filius: You’re right, not the actual pixie stix, I’m sure we could have colored sour sugar magically without the terrifying muggle chemicals.

Everyone: ……..

Albus: What a delightful idea!

Everyone: (sweatdrop) (sigh)

Albus: As for me, I think—

Everyone: Lemon curd.

Albus: Oh, my, no! I was going to say banana sauce.

Severus: …Because it’s nothing like it ought to be and everyone in exposed to you goes… yes, of _course._

Albus: (ignores) And I’m sure Horace wouldn’t say anything to do with pineapples.

Horace: What? Certainly I would. I’m extremely fond of pineapple chutney. Goes with everything.

Everyone: _No it doesn’t._

 

Sirius: Lessee, Sniv would be a completely plain salad dressing, just raw vinegar and virgin oil.

Lily: Get. Out. Of. It. Talk about your favorite subject of you; stop _obsessing_ and leave him _alone_.

Severus: (very wide eyes) Can it be cider vinegar? Balsamic? Champa—

Lily: DO NOT FEED IN.

Severus: (exercises better part of valor for once in life)

Sirius: Whatever, Hydrangea. I am an excellent subject, it’s true. Okay, I want to be phall curry.

James: You can’t be phall, you can be vindaloo. I’m definitely hotter than you. (winks)

Sirius: Nah, you can be Habanero sauce.

James: Ah, I get you, mate. Works for me.

Remus: (rolls eyes) You two are ridiculous.

Sirius: You can be barbecue sauce, Moony, you’re pretty smoky.

Remus: I'm sure you mean smoking, and thank you, but I think I’d like to be mayonnaise.

James: …Er?

Remus: (gloomy) Mayonnaise has no trouble finding work, people use it all the time.

Evan: (HALOS, does not whistle innocently)

Sirius: Well, if you’re mayonnaise, Wormtail’s got to be salad cream.

Peter: HEY!

James: _Sirius_ , come on. How about it, Pete, what are you really?

Sirius: Swiss cheese!

Peter: (SIGH) I don’t even _like_ cheese, Padfoot. Nor do I have holes in my head, thank you. I do like kimchi, though.

James: …That fermented cabbage stuff?

Peter: Yeah. Or natto.

Sirius: …Pete, that stuff is _vile_. It smells like _nothing on earth_.

Peter: (shrugs) I like it. I can’t help it if you lot have boring tastes. (g)

Sirius: OI! XD

James: Point to Petey! XD

Remus: (tolerant head-shake at them) What about you, Lils?

James: NO! MY wife! I have to guess! And I guess… honey mustard! Dijon honey mustard!

Sirius: A bold venture! With specificity even! The lad is a true Gryffindor, and must be kept out of Vegas at all costs! Prepare moral support, lads!

Lily: Sorry, Siri, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. (hugs James for knowing her)

James: (beams)

 

Evan: You want to be horseradish, don’t you.

Severus: It’s considerably more versatile than people give it credit for.

Reg: Not garlic?

Severus: Too much potential for racial, oral hygiene, and smelliness jokes. Pass. Besides, I like radishes. They’re crisp and clean and have bite without lingering residue or papery detritus.

Reg: What about you, Evan?

Evan: I want to let Severus pick. ^_^

Reg: (discreet gag)

Severus: Eggs.

Evan: (g) Explain.

Severus: Essential protein. Classic. Smooth, unreadable shell. You can’t tell you’ve applied too much heat until they explode in your face. And they’re a binding agent. You can’t bake without them. Things fall apart.

Reg: (less discreet gag)

Severus: And they are so very blond.

Reg: (chokesnorfle)

Evan: (g) Not a condiment, though.

Severus: Yes, but if I say butterscotch Reggie might actually vomit on the rug.

Reg: It’s a nice rug but very inflammable looking, it’d be such a pity if something happened to it.

Severus: (amused) All right, tamari sauce.

Reg: Because?

Severus: As a soy sauce it gives savor, but it has a richer and more complex flavor, and even people with tetchy digestions and gluten allergies can tolerate it.

Reg: I _am_ going to vomit on the rug.

Evan: (airy) Nonsense, ask Kreacher to do yours if you’re jealous.

Reg: No, I know mine, I want to be chocolate sauce.

Evan: Okayyyyy?

Reg: (sulky) What. I’m not trying to be _exotic,_ or _controversial,_ or _clever._ And you can stop looking at me like I’m being dirty, Evan. Everyone likes chocolate sauce. I like chocolate sauce. I want to be chocolate sauce.

Severus: (squeezes his shoulders) You’re definitely chocolate sauce, kitten.

Evan: (apropos of nothing) Wasabi goes with tamari.

Severus: Chocolate is better salted than people think, especially with caramel, and it’s possible to use a soy sauce for that. And I mentioned about the versatility, horseradish and chocolate don’t actually go at all badly—

Evan: STOP HELPING.

Severus: …Why are you being bizarre?

Evan: (sulky) You said I was butterscotch and you don’t care about sweets. You think caramels that aren’t burnt are bland and cloying.

Severus: True, when it comes to _food_ I’m not terribly compelled by mellow or—

Reg: (FLEES)

 

* * *

 

 **Ebony:** If you could be an insect, what would you be and who would you sting first?

Severus: Let's not be hasty. Potter and Black would both benefit from a steady diet of glumbumble honey, rather than being stung. An animagus transformation should have no impact on the honey’s melancholic effect; it would be good for their egos. However, Regulus would get a kick, as they say, out of enough billiwig stings to induce giddiness and hovering. Then again, that grub with the imperius-like qualities from that science fiction movie would fit very nicely in my father's ear, I think (although, ugh, but one must suffer for a better world), and then certain home improvements might come to pass. Or one could just turn into a wasp or gadfly and sting Pettigrew every time he tries to aim Black's boredom at other people...

 

* * *

 

 **Ebony:** James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin naked together on a bed. What would you do first, hurt them, or obliviate yourself?

Severus: Neither. I would take my cue from Hephaestus, petrificus their arses while wound together, and suspend them at eye level over the House tables in the Great Hall. Since it's their belief that exposing one's peers is a harmless laugh and all, I'm sure they won't mind.

Ebony: I don't think they meant that to extend to themselves, you know...

Severus: (purrs) DIDN'T they?! (tsk) What a sad oversight; they really ought to have MENTIONED it if they wanted there to be limits on the application of their methods when they demonstrated them! No, no, I'm quite sure you're wrong, such GIFTED SCHOLARS as Potter and Black, beloved of so many professors and with such good marks, MUST be THOUGHTFUL AND CLEVER chaps: of a surety such SMART boys would have had BASELINE INTELLIGENCE AS OF A DROWNED FLOBBERWORM enough to prevent the techniques of their own invention, such as having one's own ideas turned against one, being turned on _them_ , if they didn't feel it was all fair play in the spirit of good fun!!! No no no and again no, you misunderstand their very SPORTINGLY GRIFFINDOR natures and do them a TERRIBLE disservice, apologize at once!

Ebony: No. Since said toerags probably don't think anyone would ever dare use it on them...

Evan: (affably) People who attack the same person four on one year after year and don't notice that he never absents himself from the field of battle or sics stronger allies on him have no excuse for thinking there is absolutely anything said crazy person wouldn't dare. Unless these people have actually had lobotomies.

Severus: (makes a face at him)

 

* * *

 

 **Valor:** “What Disney Princess are you?” Stupid buzzfeed quiz, but I'd be curious to see how Severus scores. Also, what could prompt him to take that quiz in the first place?

Author: At the age I'm writing him, he hasn't yet gone silent and forbidding and tends to respond to direct questions.  If he doesn't like the questions, he's more likely to respond at more length and in more technical language than desired than to curl his lip, raise his eyebrow, and say nothing.  That'll come later.

 **Valor:** Soooo which was it?

Author: No, no, I will make him actually take the quiz. Only because I love you. Or possibly because it’s exactly the kind of ludicrous question I was fishing for and I am an authorial sadist. :D

_This is a multiple-choice quiz, but I’ll only transcribe the choices where I feel they help the answers make sense._

**1: Favorite Disney movie? _(presuming knowledge of them you may not have in-fic)_**

Severus: Robin Hood, despite the ridiculous anthropomorphized animals and the likelihood that if there was a real Robin Hood figure he was in Wales during the realm of... William of Orange or thereabouts, I think it was, maybe The Bloody?  But the closest Wizarding community to my home town was the one in the Sherwood, and I consider it more my home than where my house is.  They used one of my potions producing the Silver Arrow brooms, in fact, and they're certainly my Quidditch team (other than Slytherin, of course).  Additionally, the Princes have Plantagenet ancestry so I have a personal interest, and the songs about John are rather catchy... although when one discounts the leonine propaganda one can rather sympathize with his position.  Do you realize Richard barely considered himself English?

**2: Secretly my enemies are jealous of my…**

_industriousness, looks, determination, dreams, wealth, bravery, demeanor, passions, I don’t have enemies_

Severus: Intelligence and creativity aren't on here.

Evan: Neither is insanity.  (marks off bravery for him)

Severus: I think 'frustrated by my determination' would be more accurate.  They don't understand why I don't lie down and die.  Or transfer to another school.

Evan: Neither does anybody else.  It's bravery, you're a crap Slytherin, get over it, we did.

**3\. What are you most scared of?**

_saying goodbye to my friends, losing my job, pop quizzes, global warming, scissors, Wal-Mart, war, being alone, standing still_

Severus: ...Saying goodbye to my friends and ending up alone on a fried planet, without an income, raiding echoing abandoned convenience stores to live, because I failed the test and stood still and did nothing while a war snipped off bits of their souls until they turned into monsters or died and destroyed our world in the process.  Scissors?  Really?  Fine, fanaticism and Really Stupid Governance aren't on here, I suppose war is closest, at least it's the symptom.

Entire wizarding world: (edges away slowly)

Albus: (observes this) EXCELLENT. Dibs!

**4: What do you look for in a soulmate?**

Severus: I don't believe in those, but anyone who wants to spend ten minutes with me had better be sodding _bedrock_.  (marks steadiness)

**5: Choose a talking animal**

Severus: No sphinxes on there. (marks 'animals can't talk)  I'm quite pleased Fawkes can't talk, actually.  Lord knows how addled the flaming chicken must be after all that time on Dumbledore's shoulder huffing the fumes off the dye in his robes.

**6: What do you do with your time off?**

_go camping, just get out of town, get together with my family, lie around, play videogames, LARP, burn the candle at both ends, go to the beach, I'M ALWAYS WORKING!_

Severus: I _am_ always working!

**7: What is the secret to true love?**

_humor, understanding, faith, compassion, acceptance, communication, chemistry, equality, I’ll know it when I find it!_

Severus: I HATE EVERYBODY.

Evan: (pats)  Pretend you're giving advice to a third year about to do something stupid.

Severus: (groan) (face twitching a lot) All those things.  You're fucked if you don't have _all_ those things.

Evan: (beams) You have to check one, though.

Severus: (twitches more) I suppose 'understanding' serves as a near-synonym for more of them than the others.

**8: Where would you like to have a first date?**

Severus: I'm going to say 'museum' because I do not wish to be killed in my sleep.

Evan: You're going to say museum because you'd rather argue over art vs natural history than be anywhere anyone might talk to you, bump into you, or blare music in your ear.

Severus: ...that too. >.>

**9: Pick an artist**

_Miley Cyrus is on this list. ‘Nuff said._

Severus: What.  They're all muggles.  Art is not my thing.  I have no bloody clue who these people are.  There is no metal on there, I'm almost sure.  Or jazz, or folk, or NOT THAT I KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE (ahem).  Er... maybe the Italian-looking name is a classical one and pre-Separation and then I'll get in less trouble with all the purebloods?

**10: What is happily ever after?**

_‘In a job I love’ and “In a castle’ are both on this list. We had to do a Heimlich to prevent DADA-Prof!Severus choking on the irony. ‘The Adventure Continues!’ is on this list. Albus was a very good sport about being locked in the small room with Harry and Severus and the Nerf bats._

Severus: "I'm not sure but it isn't what's happening now?"  _Ha,_ isn't that the truth.

Evan: _I’m_ happy.

Severus: My job is worthwhile and enjoyable and that the word ‘home’ should have meaning is chronically disconcerting, but the world is going to hell.

Evan: You always say that.

Severus: I’ll stop saying it when it ceases to be true. We’re still on the downhill slope and rapidly accelerating.

Evan: I just don’t know how I stand all the rainbows and daisies around here. (g)

Severus: (smirk) You sit within my shadow and giant bubblehead charm and thereby avoid both sunburn and pollen allergies.

Evan: XDDDD

**You got: Mulan:  Outgoing and vivacious, you are considered the sporty one in your group. However, athletics are not the sum total of who you are as you have a keen interest in the world around you.**

Severus: ...............

Evan: I wouldn't say _vivacious_.  But you have to admit you're _astoundingly_ energetic for Slytherin.  And you know it's because you're a giant target that I wanted you to get off the Quidditch team, not because you were bad at it.

Severus: OUTGOING?!

Evan: Well, not in the making-friends way, but I've never seen you hesitate to go up to a stranger to tell them how wrong they are.  And you've certainly got the most eclectic set of interests of anyone I know.

Severus: No, no, yes, it's just the 'vivacious and outgoing' bit that's choking, otherwise I think I'm flattered.  The lady may have been a front-lines soldier but she reputedly deceived her unit about her gender for quite a long time, and I doubt they had individual shower and toilet stalls, and she would have had to compensate for a lighter frame and muscles that built up more slowly than her peers' did.  Also, not a princess, was willing to cheat when the test was important but the skill wasn’t meaningful to her but not when she felt the skill mattered, intuitively used creative, outside the box, often physics-based tactics at the drop of a yuan, and did not in the least enjoy her makeover.  Yes.  This is acceptable to me. (smug)


	6. The Platinum Peacock is Pecked

**Hwyla:** For Lucius (in the time of the story) - just why DID you become a DE?

Lucius: (somewhat taken aback) Why wouldn't I?

 

* * *

 

 **Hwyla:** A question for Narcissa and Lucius. It's a repeat of one I asked about Sev and Ev. What animagus form do you think your partner would take? What is their 'inner animal'? I'm also actually wondering whether Evan has ever seen that white peacock and Lucius in the same spot together or whether that might just have been Lucius who gave Evan such a scare?

Narcissa: Oh, darling, I know Lucius would like to think he's a great black panther of some sort—can one have an albino 'black panther,' or would it be called something else? Certainly black or white, completely; he wouldn't tolerate *spots*—but I'm afraid you're right on target about those peacocks.

Evan: There are a *lot* of peacocks, though. He could be one of them now, I suppose, for all I know, though he would have bragged about it to Cissa and she probably would have been all proud of him and hinted. But he couldn't have been older than first-year at the time; in fact, I don't think he'd left for Hogwarts yet. I was quite young.

Severus: In any case, the likelihood of his having been a Child Animagus Prodigy is approximately nonexistent. Arithmancy I might believe, but transfiguration isn't really his strong suit.

Lucius: (sniff) The teacher was uninspiring. In any case, one rarely needs transfiguration, Severus, when one has both house elves and money.

Severus: (rolls eyes) Oh, of _course_.

Lucius: (suavely) As to my lovely wife, I tend more to think of her more as a graceful iris—

Evan: Ibis?

Severus: Isis!

Narcissa: (demurely) Thank you, Lucius. Bless you, Severus.

Severus: A pun! A very palpable pun! It’s not just me, Ev, look!

Evan: (sigh) Well done, Cissa, he’ll be gloating all week now.

Narcissa: (dimples) And I don’t have to live with him.

Severus: (exchanges smirks with her, which they both turn on Evan)

Evan: …help. _O Merlin, Light of Lanterns, Word-Among-Letters…_

Lucius: (pretending none of that silliness just happened) But she could easily put one in mind of a Siamese. Kneazle, of course, not some common housecat.

Severus: ...Except that animagus forms aren't magical.

Lucius: Tell Rosier that, 'Quetzalcoatl.'

Severus: I did. —Ev? You’re having an expression.

Evan: ...You're calling a _pale blond witch_ a _cream-colored cat_.

Severus: (grinning at Narcissa): A _shrieky_ cream-colored cat. (gets swatted) With dark bits like it forgot to dye its hair this month.

Narcissa: …Excellent point, Severus. (turns to Lucius with ominous sweetness)

Lucius: (slightly panicky and blaming Evan) I don't see how you can object after what you said.

Evan: I said what I said because of the easily underestimated and the tendency to get in close and claw your face off and the deceptively cuddly.

Severus: TRAITOR! I mean, LIAR!

Lucius: (ignores Severus) So?

Evan: (to Narcissa) Mine has more imagination than yours.

Narcissa: (sedately) Mine has precisely the qualities I want him to have, thank you.

Lucius: (looks smug)

Severus: (leaves room hastily so as to be out of Lucius's earshot before laughing hysterically)

 

* * *

 

 **Hwyla** : Precisely which of Lucius' qualities is it that Narcissa values the most? I doubt it's actually the money. I think she would have found a rich man even if she had not chosen Lucius. And I do believe she knows him (and his faults) just as well as Evan knows Sev. I think she sees him as a bit 'nouveau riche' and possibly trying 'too hard'. He seems to be relatively intelligent - at least Sev doesn't round on him and call him a 'dunderhead' and not only can he discuss historical politics in correspondence with a 'nerd' like Sev, but appears to have highly enjoyed it. But none of these are necessarily what Narcissa values the most. So what about him 'caught' her?

N: (sighs) He does indeed have a full measure of the Malfoy nouveau-riche trying-too-hard difficulty. My Draco will always know that he's a _Black_ , and that should get it out of the line. I consider it my gift to pureblood society.

[1990's!Severus: (pained, tight, headachy, vague-approximation-of-a-smile)]

N: Now, Lucius is certainly intelligent. He's a brilliant Slytherin in the Slughorn mold, and he's book-clever enough in the areas that interest him, like history and finance and finance. Which he'll tell you are all the same thing, of course. However, as long as you don't tell him I said so, I will admit that Severus wouldn't call Lucius names whatever his opinion. Lucius was our prefect when we first got into school, and while the manners that we—that is, mostly I, at that point—were able to drum into Severus were a bit... hit-and-miss, some of them did stick. As you can tell, because the clever lamb did manage to graduate breathing and with all his limbs attached.

Severus: (rubs shins, somewhere between resentful and nostalgic)

N: What my pet has that others don't—no, naturally it isn't the money; one does wish to do one’s best towards one's children’s inheritance, but my own portion would have sufficed if necessary. In part it's his priorities, of course. He was perceptive enough to value me as myself; he didn't court me only with tokens but with letters and by trying to think of ways to be of assistance to my friends and family. He understands family. He was telling me from the beginning that any family of mine would be able to rely on him, and it's always been true.

That in itself isn't unique, any pureblood wizard should fight for his House, and by marrying allies himself to his wife's blood. But Lucius isn't _clumsy_. How many wizards do you think could have given real help and comfort to Severus when he was having panic attacks all over the place without giving him fits over ideas like 'charity' and 'indebtedness' and 'invasion of privacy and personal life,' even with me and Evan trying to nudge them away from the worst fumbles? Evan may enjoy trailing about after a Fizzing Whizzbee sharp enough to cut himself, but a sound long-term plan for the family's future and tactical instincts to bring it about are more my preference. Intelligent conversation is a blessing, naturally, but really, everyone but Evvie finds _unceasing_ exposure to an eccentric genius rather wearing.

Severus: ...You're very good at that; I almost don't feel insulted.

N: Now, really, darling, you wouldn't want to live with me, either, would you?

Severus: YOU KEEP AWAY FROM MY WARDROBE, WOMAN!

N: (laughs) That's what I thought.


	7. Noses to the Grindstone

**Daashi:** A non-spoilery question. I suppose asking everyone (Snape and his peers) what they want to for a living or what they're retirement plans are, would kind of be a tad inappropriate.

 

 **James:** Huh? I think Marauder’s Moon is going pretty well, don’t you lot? We’re making enough joke shop sales to get our name known in the general pop, and the aurors and hit wizards are starting to take an interest in our more serious stuff. (slightly apologetic) I know it’s more important for other people than for me and Lils, but (more confident) I really feel we’re making a success of it. Don’t see why we should have to do anything else, eh?

 

 **Lily** : Oh, gosh… it’s a bit hard to be asked that outright. I mean… my mum would never have dreamed of having a job. Tuney was so proud of her secretarial training, but then she was _also_ incredibly proud to be able to give it up when she got married. And it seems as if a lot of witches and some of the wizards make a first career of having kids and what mum would have called Worthy Causes and that, and then go political or start up shops using domestic skills later.

And with Jamie’s family being rich I wouldn’t have to _hold down a job,_ not the way I expected to need to. And… part of me feels like I ought to just for my pride, but isn’t it a complete waste if I do? I mean, I didn’t marry James for his family, but when I did, it did come with visibility and his position and all. That makes me a very visible witch and, in particular, a visible muggleborn. And there are certainly things I care about. Since I don’t need to earn a living, I don’t think I could face myself in the mirror if I didn’t do the same things I expected Sev to. I don’t know how yet, though, not how to get really heard and do any good. That is, I the being-heard might not be difficult soon, but I _have_ worked out by now Sev might have a point about shouting not being enough if all the ears have got cotton in.

 

 **Sirius** : Technomancy, mate, it’s the thing. The charmwork for the things we’re selling is all right—although Evans can naaaaaaag—but once we can make magic work with machines, getting along in the muggle world’ll be a hell of a lot easier. Dumbledore’s got his machines he invents himself, and they’re far out, credit where it’s due, but once we work out how to work their stuff with magic instead of electricity we’ll be able to blend in and keep up whatever they invent, have all the music, and improve their machines with spells, too, without it going all lightning-burst. Frinstance, I’ve got this motorbike I’m working on, and once I’ve got it running by spellwork instead of gas, why shouldn’t it go at any speed I want, or have weather protection, or fly like a broom, or take a disillusionment charm? Or how about if we could make record players work in magical homes? Right now you’ve got to send someone out to a concert with a music ball if you want a recording, and if they don’t get close to a stage all you get is shouting.

 

 **Peter** : My job isn’t bad, really. It’s not the most glamorous corner of the Improper Use of Magic Office, but it’s decent work, needs doing, I’m good at it. I’d like to get into the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes eventually, though. The Accidental Magic Reversal Squad someday, work my way up through the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee or the Invisibility Task Force. After seven years with Prongs and Padfoot, I’d be _good_ at all that. I’m not sure where exactly I’d like to retire, but a nice comfortable house somewhere quiet and on the warmer side. Not out in the middle of nowhere, though, somewhere with good pubs and take-away close enough to walk to. I already have to watch my weight now, so I expect by the time I retire I’ll have to be very firm with myself about _no apparating to dinner_.

 

 **Remus** : (SIGH)

 **Remus:** I’m very grateful to James for backing the company, of course. And they definitely need me, it’s not as if it feels like charity or anything. I suppose Lily could keep the books in order if she had to, but she’s brilliant with the charmswork, it’s a much better use of resources to keep her on that. Same with Gideon; it’d be a crime to take him and Fab off development and advertising. And I am glad of any extra work I can pick up.

It’s not what I pictured, though. Before I knew I could go to Hogwarts, I thought I’d either go into… well, everyone thought ‘it’ll be a bookshop for Johnny,’ but I thought working in a museum, maybe even the British, restoring the old history so people could look at it. Steady, too, and no crises, so it’d be all right to take the time off every month, much easier than in a shop. And then when I was getting through Hogwarts and doing so well in DADA and no one was Finding Out, I started to hope I could be a cursebreaker. I was _good_ at that kind of thing. Cleaning up after those three after they’ve gone exploring mad bits of the castle and gone after Snape all the time, you get good at that. It’s the same sort of thing, when you think about it: cleaning up old things, making them safe and right again.

And I have a feel for it. Maybe it’s something to do with The Thing or maybe I just have a talent, I don’t know. But I couldn’t get hired anywhere. Rosier was right; we really shouldn’t have been surprised. It was good of him to suggest owl-order, anyway, even if the book he gave me was a bit rubbish.

 

 **Lucius** : … _Earning a living,_ good gracious, how vulgar. (laughs lightly)

 

 **Narcissa:** (smiles kindly) Lucius and I are involved in several committees and charitable organizations. I do more of the latter and am more involved with St. Mungos than he is; he’s most interested in assisting the smooth running of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic. We both also have a number of protégées whose careers we take great pleasure in assisting. In whose number I would never dream of including Severus, of course.

Lucius: I would.

Narcissa: (gives him a mild Marital Smile, continues) It’s an investment in the future of the wizarding world. There’s really no question of retirement. In time, we may turn over some of these responsibilities to Draco, perhaps even some to Regulus, and spend more time with each other and our friends at home and in travel. What else would one do?

 

 **Evan:** (cheerfully) Oh, a painter paints as long as he can hold a wand. And then he becomes an art critic. I mean a teacher of younger painters. Like Grandpère. It’s not a matter of money; the firm and family have done very well over the centuries. We have a responsibility to do portraits more than other things because otherwise wizards’ memories would die along with them. It gets a bit dull at times, but there it is.

I suppose if I ever felt it was all right to ‘retire’ it would mean I’d do a lot more of other kinds of paintings, experiment with styles more or focus on the sorts of things you can’t when the painting has to be about the person. You can still do animals and landscapes and interesting scenes for portraits, of course, but you can’t make them the focal point or really tell a story. And you do have to be realistic. Well, I mean, without making the sitter unhappy. And the client, if that’s not the same person. I like some of the impressionists and art nouveau, but that’s _right_ out for my sort of work.

So I could play around with that more. And do more drawing. Draw little pictures to go with some of the things Spike says, that could be funny. I don’t think I’d want to do a whole comic book, though, that’d be far too much work. Maybe a kid’s book, though. Or illustrate a textbook, ooh! Show what all the charms do!

 

 **Reg** : Is ‘retiring’ like when Dad and Granddad mostly stopped doing committees and working the elections and things and started hiding away from Mother in their studies with the bottles? Can I do something else? I would have liked to play Quidditch if it wouldn’t have been a scandal for me even to try out. Mother would have just died, though. I knew better than to even bring it up, even before Siri left and I was going to have to be heir. But I would have liked that. Things are simple up there, especially when you’re playing seeker instead of chaser.

 

 **1990s!Severus:** AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (continues laughing like a psychopath all the way down to his office, cloak swirling, terrifying all the first-through-third years and Hufflepuffs. Closes door, stops cackling, makes sure will is still in drawer, pours tea, puts on TSO, grades papers.)

 

 **1980!Severus** : (snorts) Well. First I wanted to open a tea-and-potions shop with Mam next to the sweets-and-wand shop in Nottingham. Quite specific, I do realize. Later I used to think owl-order potions so I could avoid customer interaction.

Just at the moment, though, I’m afraid of what I’d be asked to do if it were known that I had unstructured time. I didn’t really want the Defense job, but when I think about the kids graduating into this mess without being thought to look or think properly…

If I only knew my job were secure now, or if I could get a grant to finish my thesis and _get away to do it_ , I do like the research best, frustrating as it can be. And one could always _supplement_ with owl-order, or by selling to one’s community. As far as retirement goes, though, really. What real odds are there, in times like these, of ever seeing that.

Evan **:** (SERIOUS MENACE FACE)

Severus **:** (rolls eyes) Fine, everything will be rainbows and sunshine and toffee and I’ll cure lycanthropy and vampirism and cancer and the common cold and get Narcissa to kick the government into a shape that both makes sense and functions, no matter how hard Luke cries. Then Lily and I will take over the Daily Prophet and show Wizarding Britain what actual, credible, hard-hitting journalism looks like and you can do all the cartoons, while Reggie runs the ice cream parlour and is overrun by young single mothers and foreign men who think it's within the bounds of civilized behavior to dash about sweatily in running shorts.

Evan **:** YAY!!!!

* * *

 

 **Daashi:** Now that I am done being a smart-arse, here is my question; what subject that isn't taught at Hogwarts do you think that should be? And what subject would you remove from the current curriculum?

 **James** : Hogwarts is fine. I mean, _Binns_ needs to move on, but Hogwarts is Hogwarts, you know?

 

 **Lily** : Muggle Studies ought to be mandatory. And _better_. And it should go along with Wizard Studies. What use is it to sneer at people for not knowing when to bow and when to shake hands without _telling_ us at least once? And History of the Goblin Wars should be replaced with History of the Magical World, if not just plain History. Honestly.

 

 **Sirius** : Everybody else is already going to say History, so I’m going to say, well, not that we shouldn’t _have_ Herbology, but it shouldn’t be mandatory anymore. It made sense before the industrial revolution, but, er, now we have groceries and that. And we ought to have (waves a hand) we ought to be able to take advanced tutorials or something. So I could of done an advanced engineering study in Muggle Studies, and we all could have studied animagery officially with the Tartan and not had so many accidents, and Snape could have taken Remedial Hygiene…

 

 **Peter:** I don’t see what we need astronomy for. What would be useful would be a class in home magic. Charms doesn’t cover anything to do with cooking and potions really doesn’t, either, except for how to chop and peel by hand, and it’s not as if everyone coming to Hogwarts is going to leave and go home to servants and house elves these days. Most of us have to shift for ourselves in flats, at least till we get married, and the witches got exactly the same classes we did unless their mums taught them stuff.

 

 **Remus:** I agree with James about not getting rid of any classes. And with everyone about History. What I’d like to see added is international studies. The Triwizard Tournament was a _roving lunatic asylum with a mortality rate_ , but at least when they were having it there was some acknowledgement that there was a world outside the UK and other countries had wizards. I don’t see why we need something that dramatic to do an exchange program or, or pen pals or something. Or, or read some stories in Care of Magical Creatures and correct them for accuracy as homework, for pity’s sake. It’d be more fun than essays and it’d show we’d learned the material!

Sirius: Yeah! And in DADA, too! Like when they cover jinni! I heard a rumor the Arabian Nights has loads of dirty bits.

Remus: …Stay classy, Snuffles.

James: Is that rumor one you started, then?

Sirius: Um… (tries to remember) I don’t _think_ so…

James: I move we hunt it down in the library and find out!

Sirius: Motion seconded! Carried! Gavel-bang! Library ho!

**Lucius:** The presence of Muggle Studies on the curriculum is a disgrace. As is the presence of muggleborns in the school. I can’t help feeling that the school does its students rather a disservice not to teach finances, but it would be ungracious of me to insult gift hippogriffs, I suppose…

 

 **Narcissa** : Really, darling, the content of the classes hardly matter, do they? It’s what one does with one’s time at school that matters. Anything that needs to be learned is so much more likely to be found out outside of classes or in books that no one bothers to assign. Some people would have benefited greatly from lessons in oh, deportment and related matters, I must admit.

 

 **Evan** : (shrugs) I agree with Narcissa and Evans.

Narcissa **:** (looks upset in a way that doesn’t give her lines) You can’t agree with us both, darling.

Evan **:** (agreeably) If you say so. Anyway, I agree with Narcissa and Evans, but I would have liked to have more of an art program around than just Flitwick’s music club and whatever the Muggle Studies class occasionally got up to. Speaking personally.

 

 **Regulus** : Well, _I_ don’t think we should change History. Everyone does their homework done in History, or pulls all-nighters and then takes naps in class. And I don’t think we should get rid of any of the classes. You have to try things to find out what you’re good at, and some jobs require weird combinations of NEWTs that you wouldn’t expect. I had to go over about a thousand pamphlets with Gildy and Thor Rowle and the girls when it was Career Advice time; I remember. I don’t know what other classes there could be, but I think there should have been more clubs and things. The Slug Club was really beneficial for us, but it’s hardly open even to everyone in Slytherin, and it wasn’t exactly _fun_. I know a lot of girls would have liked if we’d had more dances, and we don’t have the gobstones club anymore and the chess club’s practically Ravenclaws-only, and Quidditch and Hogsmeade are about it for anything outdoors-ish.

 

 **1980!Severus** : DADA should be replaced by just Self-Defense. Then it would lose the stigma and maybe the curse. Defense against dark arts could still be included, but one could also learn, perhaps, _ducking?_ Divination is completely absurd, whatever use Narcissa is getting out of it could surely be achieved some other way. History should be fixed but if it can’t be if would be better for its time slot to be replaced. Luke’s suggestion about economics was a good one and, though it pains me to admit it, Pettigrew had a point about idiots like himself moving out of the dormitories and into flats and starving because they don’t know how open tin cans. Not that I’d weep in his particular case, but there must be hundreds of harmless and moderately worthy Hufflepuffs whose mothers have been put through a most harrowing and disappointing experience over the years.

**1997!Severus:** (takes a deep breath)... **  
**(This answer became[a whole 'nother fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2276646).)


	8. Do Not Ask about the steak and kidney pies

**Louise** (to the Marauders): My husband is fond of asking people "who's on your kidney list?" meaning, to whom in your life would you donate one of your kidneys. That question doesn't really go very far with these guys, I think...

 

James & Sirius: EWWWWWWWW!

Sirius: Why would someone even want that?! I mean, _bits of someone else... inside you..._ (goes green)

James: ...Paddy, when a wizard loves someone very, very much...

Sirius: You know what I mean!!

James: Yeah. Honestly. This isn't a knock about muggles as people generally, but... there is something _really wrong_ with those 'doctor' blokes. I thought those 'stitches' Lily told me about were disgusting, but...

 

Lily: Wizards shouldn't need that kind of surgery; there are things the healers can do even if the regrowth potions are blocked by a curse or something. Spells to do the filtering, even charmed kidney-shaped things they can sort of _sink into_ the right place if the wizard would rather do that than keep renewing the spells. But I'd give one to Mum or Dad, probably even Tuney. —Only I wouldn't right _now_. It wouldn't be safe till after the baby's weaned, even if I had it removed magically and regrown. And, I don't know... by that time things could be bad. I suppose I'd have to ask Dumbledore if I could be spared for it. But I'm sure if my Mum or Dad's life were at stake he'd let me.

 

Peter: Mum and James. (defensively) Sirius has a brother, and he's not that hard a touch. He'd do it if Sirius really needed him to, I bet, and he'd probably be a better match. And Remus—

Lucy: _Well!_ I guess I see where I stand!

Peter: (gapes, brain overloads) You, uh, you'd want..? (gapes more)

Lucy: (miffed & sniffy) It would be a nice gesture, you know.

Peter: (stares at her abdomen like she's said he's gotten her pregnant)

Lucy: (tilts head, looks at him, laughs) ...Well, all right, then.

 

Remus: ...Er, no one. Bad idea. Werewolf.

 

* * *

 

 **Louise** (to the Marauders): I'll add the standard job interview question about strengths and weaknesses, because we can rattle them off on their behalf, but I wonder what their own honest self-perceptions would be.

 

James: Well, I’d say I’m equally amazing at Seeker and Chaser, but I like playing Seeker better and there aren’t as many people who can do it well, you need your eyes to work a certain way, it doesn’t matter if your actual vision is bad as long as your glasses stay on. I’ll admit I’m a rubbish Beater. Not bad as a Beater, but, you know, wasted in it when I can do other things better, and Siri and Pete are really good. Then, when it comes to magic, transfiguration, obviously, and I’m pretty fair in DADA, especially wards, but really, who could pay attention in history or potions when—

Remus: I think she was asking about personality, Prongs.

James: …I try not to answer questions like that. It seems to end up with me sleeping on the couch, for some reason. (baffled)

Remus: (hastily hides his mouth)

 

Sirius: Obviously I’m generally amazing and handsome and brilliant and all that. Suppose I can be a bit…

James: Vain?

Peter: Mean?

Remus: Insane? Reckless? Careless? Irresponsible?

Sirius: _Spontaneous._ (sniffs and flips his hair)

 

Peter: (looks uncomfortable and resentful) I work hard and do my best, don’t know what you want from a bloke.

 

Lily: I don’t know if this is a strength or weakness, exactly, but when you asked the question, I thought that what I miss about being a little girl is you can, I don’t know, just do things when you think they’ll be amazing or fun. If you want to jump off a swing and you know you can because no one’s watching who doesn’t know, you just do it. When you’re older, you’d think, ‘No, that’ll make Tuney feel jealous,’ or ‘that’s not something you ought to be doing at your age.’ It’s the right thing to think about other people more, I know, but I feel like something gets lost…

 

Remus: I know, you want to hear me say I don’t speak up for what’s right often enough. But that’s because you think like Lily, you think just speaking up works. It doesn’t. You have to be on their side and not nag, so they _listen_ when you say ‘this is wrong’ and don’t hear ‘you’re bad.’ And you have to pick your time. It’s _no good_ saying ‘don’t do this’ when they’re already in public. They just take that as provocation and get worse. You’ve got to stop them in private and before they’ve got a solid idea to be excited about. You’ve got no idea how many things I’ve steered them away from before things could get bad. _The beta doesn’t challenge unless the alpha fails_. I don’t like using wolf metaphors, but that’s what it’s like, being friends with popular blokes. It’s not always fun, and it doesn’t always work, and a lot of times it’s choosing the lesser of two mischiefs. But honestly, I do know what I’m doing.

 

* * *

 

 **Louise** (to the Marauders): I was also thinking about boggarts - we know about Remus of course, but what about James and the others? What were their boggarts? Do we know?

 

Peter: Since I became an animagus, it’s been owls. (twitches) You don’t have time to see or smell them—you can’t even hear their _wings_!

 

Lily: Dementors. When I was, what, five? Maybe six… Around then. Daddy threw a party because there was no chance he’d ever be obliged to have anyone hanged ever again. I mean, he just didn’t like the option being there. And then years later I went with Sev to look at a gibbet, and it was, oh, it was just _awful,_ I could just _imagine_ it, that coarse, heavy, scratchy rope... And one of the last two executions in England had _my last name_. I don’t think we were any relation, but, you know, _brrr_. And what wizards do is so much worse. I love this world a lot, but that just makes me sick.

 

James: (mutters something in which the word ‘Lily’ is barely distinguishable and leaves hastily)

 

Sirius: …My father had this big armchair in his study, he used to go take a newspaper and a bottle of something in there when Mother got going. And he’d sort of slouch down the more he got drunk… it was this really, really big armchair, a wingback, I used to imagine it was eating him, and, I dunno, the wine was tenderizing him for it or something. (coughs) Anyway.

 

* * *

 

 **Jarek** : I'm curious about characters' favourite literature. A specific book or piece, or author, or genre, etc. A bit about why it's a favourite too. For Sev, we get to see some of his favourites especially during his schooling days, though if say mid-Hogwarts-Spike wanted to talk a bit about the literature he likes I wouldn't object (also: we know Tobias sent his son sci-fi books, did/does Sev really enjoy any, any in particular?) Then perhaps compare to Sev at this point in the story? I'd like to see what literature Ev is into at this point too, not _just_ what sounds best when read by Spike, or what causes the best arguments with the best afterward kinky sex (although those are perfectly valid reasons to enjoy literature, LOL.)

Lily's literature interests say mid-Hogwarts and then again about now, if applicable, would also be lovely. :) I'd ask about the Marauders' interests, but really a better question is if any of them did get into (muggle) literature as an interest at all? If so I'd love to hear about it, some of what they've read or liked. :)

Hmmm Lucius knows his history, actual history, I would hazard a guess that Lucius perhaps has read, say, some classical era stuff? Any, well, it's not, er, technically fiction by modern standards, but, like, has he read Homer? Or something akin? Come to think of it, did Lucius study actual history because he was told to (like, are the Malfoys rather more insistent on being thoroughly educated in this subject,) or does he have a genuine personal interest that drove him to study? Or both? Neither?

I hope my question isn't coming out garbled. :) I'd just looooove to hear your muses talk about plays, poetry, novels, etc. that captures and holds their interest, what about these things interests them, etc. etc.

_Some of the characters would apparently rather answer for each other than themselves, and I'm gonna let 'em. vOv_

**Lily** : When I was younger, I read a lot of Jane Austen. I—well, between when I met Sev and when we went to school, I would read fantasy, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis and Susan Cooper and so on, and make him read them, too, so he could tell me if the books got anything right. (rueful) And because he clearly wanted to read stories but before he'd put down his set books he needed an excuse and his arm twisted.

But, yes, then at school I got into Jane Austen. I mean, I liked the books, they're funny and mostly sweet in the end, but also, in retrospect, I think it was helpful for me to be reading about an alien English society with strict rules you had to adhere to that nobody would explain. I made Sev read those for the same reason, but he wasn't quite as happy about it. So many people are silly in them, I mean, _really_ silly, it was hard for him to take. I don't think I have any favorites, now.

James: Yes, you do, you've been through that collection of Wodehouse about three times since we were married and it's massive, and your copy of Oliver has so many dog-ears I keep being afraid Padfoot's had puppies in it. Also, that collection of Oscar Wilde stories is falling apart, we should get a new one to read to the baby.

Lily: ...Remus read that one at least as many times as I did.

James: Probably. So we should get two new ones?

 

 **Sirius** : We did [get into muggle literature], but it was probably about what you would have expected if we'd been muggles. Treasure Island, Captain Blood, Three Musketeers, Arabian Nights, all the comics we could get our hands on, Lady Chatterley... (winks)

 

Severus: **Luke** has read Homer, yes. He prefers the Aeneid. And Ovid (rolls eyes). If it counts, though, what he really likes are, you know the tabloid, gossip-rag things. Suetonius, even Tacitus, everybody's surviving letters to everybody else. Especially Cicero's. (Mimics Lucius's voice) _I imagine you've heard that P. Clodius, the son of Appius, was caught dressed up as a woman in C. Caesar's house at the national sacrifice, and that he owed his escape alive to the hands of a servant girl! A spectacular scandal! I'm sure you will be deeply distressed!_ (rolls eyes again) And he likes Herodotus because it 'proves muggles are barbarians,' which, er, they very technically were at that point, and some of the Greek playwrights. Says they're instructive and then courts hubris-related karma anyway, I don't know.

 

 **Severus** : Evan isn't really a reader. He gets his human-interest from talking to people. He's a very strange person that way.

Evan: ... _I'm_ the space alien?

Severus: Yes.

Evan: I like when we're reading about people being clever. I mean clever, not just bright. That's why the Odyssey is fun. Your friend in the awful hat just preens about having eyes connected to his brain.

Severus: ...The deerstalker is apocryphal.

Evan: It stuck because it flaunts its eccentricity in a pretentious manner and therefore suits him. I liked that one I got from the Italian attache, Name of the Rose. —NO, not for the title, shh-you.

Severus: (grin/smirks) I did, too. I hope it comes out in English soon, I want to mock the translation. You got interested in the Cadfael books, too, I think?

Evan: Yes, they don't decline to let you see the clues and then brag about how much smarter than you the detective is.

Severus: (sigh)

Evan: Now, Spike, here, is a closet Shavian. All the stuff. Play reviews, newspaper articles, polemics, the letters and prose, not just the plays. He's about worn out Man and Superman, though.

Severus: (slightly misty) It's only barely possible to tell when he's pulling a Jonathan Swift.

Evan: (slightly head-shakey) And he reads Dorothy Parker when he's In A Mood. Looks like he's going to _bite_ somebody.

Severus: Her, occasionally. The lady could wallow.

Evan: As to the books Mr. Snape sent him, I think he liked that one he got in second year a lot. The one he lied was about technomancy.

Severus: (embarrassed) I, Robot. Well, yes, at least, sort of. The stories were horrifying, but one couldn't help but be interested in the way loopholes were explored and logic got tied into pretzels once it came into contact with life.

Evan: ...I'm pretty sure any other one could, Spike.

Severus: (makes a face at him) It was good practice in Slytherin thinking. A lot of them were like that, actually; premises carried to logical extremes, and suchlike. Training for following a plan or idea to its real probable outcome if implemented. One often had to overlook some quite silly worldbuilding that obsessed over some nonexistent sociocultural quirk to get at it, but those books were about ideas at the core, behind all the ray-gun froth and fripperies.

Evan: (affectionate despair) I don't know why you don't just read philosophy and have done.

Severus: Because I have no more interest in watching strangers wank intellectually than physically.

Evan: (face freezes between wtf and _no_ and intrigue and starts twitching)

Severus: (WINS!)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record:
> 
> A. I am a Doyle fan. Evan would like Holmes as played by Basil Rathbone (if he'd ever been exposed to a television), but he'd have to watch it by himself because Severus would have an epic fit over 1) the way that series doesn't tell the original stories, 2) the fact that it's out-of-era, and 3-100) Watson as played by Nigel Bruce. The TV might explode.
> 
> B. Severus does not despise all philosophers or all philosophy, it's just not what he reads for fun. Except where it's so far overlapped with strategy or Here, Let Me Explain People To You that libraries don't put it with the other philosophy books.
> 
> C. Sirius still reads comics, otherwise it's mostly nonfiction. Remus reads whatever catches his eye when he's got work in a bookish sort of place (he might say Once and Future King is his favorite, but while he does like it, his favorite is the last good book he read. He just thinks that answer is a good one for a Gryffindor and will make people leave him alone). Peter, being a working stiff, either feels he doesn't want to waste his free time reading or feels too tired for new information he doesn't need. When he curls up with a book instead of the paper, it's usually a re-read. James failed to enjoy Austen, Dickens, and Narnia, but has been introduced by Remus to John le Carré and thinks it's brilliant. Lily got halfway through Tinker Tailor and said he was on his own there and she couldn't see how he'd like anything so horrible and twisty where the author's clearly playing games with you.
> 
> Credits:  
> 'Shavians' are fans of George Bernard Shaw.
> 
> Jonathan Swift was the author of _A Modest Proposal_. You know, the one about solving the Irish overpopulation-and-starvation problem with baby food.  
>  SOYLENT GREEN IS UNDERAGE!
> 
> For the best coverage of the Romans (do the Caesars, Dan! Do the Caesars!), certainly the most accessible and enthralling (and I say this as an _I Claudius_ fan) go to [Classic Hardcore History](http://www.dancarlin.com/product-category/hardcore-history/classic-hardcore-history) for _Death Throes of the Republic_. The bit Severus quotes it taken from the final podcast, which is worth every second of its 5.5 hours _wow_ am I not kidding about this. Then subscribe, because the new episodes are always free. ^.^


	9. Crucios!  They're part of this complete breakfast!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for [ch 55](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/5343689) was 'daily routine.'

**Hwyla** : I kind of wonder how Voldy's day planner reads…

 

_To be accomplished on this day of our Dark Lord, 1980:_

_Item the first_ : The Dark Lord will rise from his plush, downy pillows an entire sinful two hours after sunrise. He will not soak in a morning bath of rosemary, thyme, and mint leaves because only filthy muggles do that and it does not significantly improve their state of filth. He will instead use a cleansing charm, thereby setting a good example for all doe-eyed followers even though the bath would leave him in a better mood and smell better. He will be served a sumptuous repast by small, greenish servants given to him in tribute by his more solvent minions. There will, prepared with love or at least in appropriate terror, be ORANGE JUICE and BACON and perhaps even BRAND-NAME CEREAL!  With, fresh from those magical cows with the green spots, WHOLE MILK! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! TAKE THAT, MRS. COLE!

 _Item the second_ : The Dark Lord will be attended by the werewolf known as Fenrir Greyback, born Melvin Punkthwistle, that they may discuss matters of deep moment such as ~~bulk orders of lice and flea repellant~~ communication with the European packs, the majority of whom do not live under bridges and would therefore be of more general use than Mr. Punkthwistle. Mr. Punktwhistle’s his awe-provoking ability to jump quite short fences and inspiring courage in the matter of biting tiny wandless people wandering outside when their parents thought they were in bed notwithstanding.

 _Item the third_ : The Dark Lord will re-consider the merits of an aromatic bath.

 _Item the fourth_ : In imitation of the inimitable C.J. Caesar, who, it is hinted by contemporary accounts if you ~~are a monomaniac with an axe to grind on every pebble~~ look closely, may have possessed a time-turner and so was clearly not a muggle, the Dark Lord will answer the correspondence from his devoted followers and resentfully deal with their puling and whinging over rich-people problems such as the dullard offspring or nephew who has not been accepted to a Ministry post of great responsibility whose holder must possess great agility of mind if the government is not to fall to its knees, while soaking in a luxurious bath of the rosemary, thyme, and _doxymint,_ because if the herbs aren’t muggle that surely makes it all right.

 _Item the fifth_ : The Dark Lord will have lunch.

 _Item the sixth_ : The Dark Lord will don immaculate robes of midnight and shadow and engage in such arcane rituals of the vanity as will leave him with considerably more edges than he needs in dealing with the afternoon’s meetings with his puppylike henchmen.

 _Item the seventh:_ Still the prettiest.

 

Tom: …Please remind me, my own. Why haven’t I killed you yet?

Severus: Because of things like what that would do to anyone but ourselves who attempted to read it, my lord.

Tom: …Hm… ha, yes, that’s very pretty. But still, Severus—

Severus: I mock because I love, sir.

 

 _Author: I had trouble with this one, and eventually I realized it’s because keeping a day planner is muggle, plebian, and terribly un-Slytherin (someone could find and decode it!!!!). Ergo His Nibs wouldn’t think of keeping one. Yes, he kept a diary like any good broody emo Dark Teenybopper would, but he’s not going to do anything similar_ now _. People might wonder, see, when he’d started._

 

* * *

 **Ebony:** How did they avoid just AKing Lockhart?

Evan: No one knows. I went through all his things once or twice, but there weren’t any obvious compulsion charms or anything like that. Severus thinks he might have had fairy godmothers, even after I explained real fairies aren’t like that and Professor Kettleburn backed me up.

Severus: (reasonably) You made it sound as if their senses of humor were quite twisted enough.

Evan: …Huh.

 

* * *

 

 **Lupin5th** : The question [ch 55] raised for me was what do Evan, Narcissa, Luke and Reg know, respectively, of Legilimency and Occlumency (in regards to actual knowing but also using, which at least Reg is after all, err, used to)?

 

Narcissa: I hear Reggie complaining about occlumency often, but he’s not able to explain what it is on any sort of practical level. And if Bella could, she won’t.

 

Lucius: Of what?

 

Regulus: (ashamed) I can’t really… ugh, I can’t say this without a pun, but I can’t wrap my mind around it. I mean, I do the exercises. But Bella doesn’t think you need to understand orders to follow them, and Severus tries—at least, I think he’s trying. But he just _gets it,_ you know how it is with him, it’s like asking him, ‘How can I cause my brain to send the proper messages to my muscles so that I can copy the wand motion you just made.’ He’ll either tell you, ‘Stop thinking about it and do it,’ or get so esoteric no one can follow one word in ten. It’s very frustrating. Er, for him, too, obviously.

 

Evan: (shrugs) Well, I hadn’t heard much about it before Reg started telling us about the problems he was having—I think may have heard Dad or one of his friends use the word once, but I was pretty young and up far past my bedtime, and they certainly didn’t know I was there. (g)

Since then I’ve flipped through some of those books Severus keeps bringing home. I’d gotten the idea that the heart of it was clearing your mind of everything but some visual metaphor you could feed with dark magic—the unstructured, will-based kind of dark, not the nasty kind—to serve as your preferred method of keeping intruders out.

Up until Spike took those lessons with that lady he agreed that was the idea. Now he says that’s only the most basic part of it, and of limited use, and the really important thing to do, or be, I s’pose, is much more complicated and difficult. He says it boils down to ‘being Slytherin like a katana or Damascus blade, not Toledo steel even if it’s stilettos.’ Which isn’t in the least clarifying, especially since he keeps telling me, “ _You_ know,” (laughs) and I really don’t.

 

* * *

 **LittleBabyDamien:** A question about daily routine. Getting dressed is something we do nearly every day, so a question about wardrobes should fit here, right? What characters wardrobe choices have been entirely self-directed, whose have been influenced or assisted by someone else, and who has opted out of choosing entirely, either leaving it up to someone else or following trends or styles without any thought or consideration? Does Lily buy all of James' socks and pants, does Narcissa consult with Lucius on coordinating their outfits when they appear together in public, do the potions lab group get tired of their functional work wear and break out into the fantastical on Friday evenings?

 

Míngyùe: (beaming) What a lovely idea!

Ranjit: Yes, that could be enormous fun!

Severus: THIS IS A POTIONS LAB WITH VOLATILES.

Ranjit: …I vote he stays home Fridays.

Evan: Seconded! Motion carried!

Severus: You don’t work here.

Evan: Or care! :D

 

Reg: I choose my own clothes, thank you.

Severus: It is, of course, entirely a coincidence that they look just like your grandfather’s.

Reg: Not _just_ like. I’m a winter. Regency looks good on me, that’s all.

Narcissa: He does have the legs for it, darling, you must admit.

Severus: Quidditch keeps everyone healthy it doesn’t destroy, certainly, but does _anyone_ have the legs for Regency?

Reg: (falters)

Narcissa: Now, don’t you listen to that buttoned up old prude, Reggie, you look charming.

Severus: It’s not so bad as long as you’re not so wedded to the style that your trousers come up to your chest, I suppose.

Narcissa: SEVERUS.

Severus: Oh, don’t pretend that doesn’t look stupid and groin-presentational to the modern eye!

Narcissa: You wouldn’t know a modern eye if it bit you!

Severus: (in a tone of concession) Cravats are good.

Reggie: (relieved) Cravats _are_ good! Bella got me a really nice one last Yule.

Severus: Did it bite you?

Reg: (ignores) It was red and black—not exactly stripes or zebra, more sort of ripples. And not Gryff-red, of course, a darker, more like, er…

Severus: Say no more. Did it bite people other than you?

Reg: …No…

Severus: …Or strangle them, perhaps. No, don’t answer that. (depressed) And then did the black grow, or the red? No, that was rhetorical, I don’t want to know. Really say no more.

 

Narcissa: (waving airy fingers) ‘Consult with’ may be too strong a word.

Lucius: (mutters) Or too some kind of word…

Narcissa: Did you say something, darling?

Lucius: That your taste is exquisite, beloved, though I can’t say I’m altogether certain about this fur hat.

Narcissa: Well, I do know what you mean, pet, but it sets off your hair and chin beautifully (peck), and it was a present from Grandfather.

Lucius: …So was That Elf. Are we sure your grandfather likes me, Narcissa?

Narcissa: (sympathetically taking his arm) That doesn’t matter at all, dearest, you’ll wear it with your head high and smile.

Lucius: (sigh) And then next week everyone will be wearing one?

Narcissa: …Oh, Lucius, _must_ they?

 

James: Oi, pants are a very personal decision, you know. Got to be just right. I’ve got a standing order at the shop, I just send an owl ‘round when I need more. As for socks, it doesn’t matter around this lot what sort you pick out. Someone will have charmed singing blue erumpents onto them within the week.

Lily: I hand-knitted him a hat and scarf set once, but it didn’t work out very well.

James: Yeah, the dog ate them. In hindsight I should have warned him they were a present, but I thought if I told him he’d do something typical to them to tease.

Lily: (sighs)

James: They were very comfortable and now the cat thinks so too?

Lily: (sighs)

 

Sirius: Wormtail’s mum still buys his pants. And socks. And shirts. And jumpers.

Pete: (mildly, stewing) It’s nice of her to want to save me the time. Since I do a full week’s work every week. I usually pick up her shopping when I go over for Sunday tea.

Sirius: (gags)

Pete: (sticks out his chin) Not everyone hates their mum and not everyone’s mum deserves it.

James: That’s true. You like my mum, don’t you, Pads?

Siri: …Yeah, but she doesn't buy your shirts for you.

Lily: That’s because Mama Dorea is ninety-three, Sirius, and I explained to her that men don’t wear shirts with ruffles anymore even after they graduate. Then I took her to Harrods and through a store with band shirts and didn’t tell her they were muggle shops and she admitted she was lost in today’s fashion trends.

Sirius: (stares at her)

James: Shove off, all you lot, I need to have loud worshipful monkey sex with my savior now.

Sirius: …Yeah, all right, fair play to you there.

Lily: Only it’s so significantly less likely to happen now you’ve announced it…

James: BUT LILY YOU ARE MY HERO!

Lily: Possibly, but I prefer not to make a spectacle of myself on public pedestals.

 _[Severus: (whispers): pageant? performance? panto? And we need to find a spin off ‘primate…’_  
Lily: ZOMG go away you idiot. XDDDD  
Severus: (g)]

Remus: …All right there, Pete?

Peter: Fine.

 

Remus: I don’t tell Padfoot what to buy, of course, but sometimes he listens to me about what it’s appropriate to wear in public. I mean, when it matters whether what he’s wearing is appropriate or not. Quite often the whole point is that it isn’t.

Lily: What do you mean you don’t tell him what to buy? Didn’t you get him that nice red leather collar for Christmas? Very handsome it was too, I’m sure it looked _stunning_ against his hair. I mean fur. (nudge nudge wink wink)

Remus: (bright red) TO AVOID THE DOGCATCHER, LILY!

Lily and Peter: Oh, we’re _sure._

Sirius: (poses shamelessly)

 

Sirius: I replace Remus’s socks and pants and gloves before they start wearing out so he doesn’t notice. Don’t tell him, I expect he’d think it was creepy.

Evan:… Rot, that’s a good idea, why didn’t I think of that?!

Sirius: Because I got all the brains in the family. (smirk)

Severus: Because you’re a ill-mannered, intrusive SOB—I refer of course to your initials—with no sense of boundaries or regard for what the hapless dishrag you’re helping against his will would wish. Whereas Evan is instinctively respectful even when he acknowledges that, rather than failing to force unwanted charity on his friends overtly, successfully outraging their dignity behind their backs would be (nasty grin), more Slytherin.

(beat)

Evan: …You can’t have him, he’s mine. I mean, er, yes, that’s very wrong of you, Sirius. Sweet, but…

Sirius: (splutters worse at ‘sweet’ than any of the rest of it)

Severus: (even more smug)

Sirius: There is something wrong with you two. …What am I saying? Everything, there is EVERYTHING wrong with you two!

Evan: MINE! :D (glomps arm)

Severus: (edges away) (unsuccessfully) (possibly was not trying as hard as he was pretending to)

 

Evan: I keep up with the trends, of course, but one only _pays attention,_ one isn’t _enslaved_. My tailor and I always talk our ideas out together, usually over brunch or tea. Sometimes they don’t turn out to be best suited for me, but if he sells one of my things to someone else I usually get either a client or a nice bottle of wine out of it. (laughs) It’s probably unkind, but I’m afraid I don’t put the magazines in the studio until they’ve aged a bit. Policy, I’m afraid. Oh, we don’t let them desiccate, but otherwise it would look so desperate. One has to keep an edge, after all. And, after all, most people over here are getting all their robes and undersuits from _Madam Malkin’s_ , for pity’s sake, they don’t see the international trends at all!

 

Severus’s tailor: (weeps drunkenly with frustration)

 

Aberforth: Three guesses who the last person Al listened to was.

* * *

 

 **RRMB:** Do the following characters have standard breakfasts as a part of their daily routine? If so, what are they?  
  
1\. James Potter  
2a. Spike  
2b. Snape  
3\. Bellatrix Lestrange  
4\. Lucius Malfoy  
5\. Tom Riddle

 

Evan: Well, Spike leaves all kinds of things warming for when I get up, but he doesn’t usually eat any of them, he’s very boring about breakfast. Just strange hard-boiled eggs and sometimes oatcakes or porridge. And raw radishes.

Severus: (mildly) Or fruit. One wants a palate cleanser after the porridge. I do eat your things, you know, I bring some to the lab and we have them for tea quite often. But that much flavor so close to waking is an assault on the senses.

Evan: Yeeesssss. :D Well, one needs some sort of stimulant to complete the waking-up process—

Severus: I leave you a full coffee pot, and there is never any coffee waiting for me when I come home. (slightly pointed)

Evan: —and you get up at stupid hours. (pout)

Severus: You mean, when it’s still technically morning.

Evan: When it’s still technically _night_ sometimes.

Severus: That’s not true.

Evan: It’s true in winter. If it’s dark out and it’s after midnight, it’s night.

Severus: It’s called _having a normal work schedule,_ Frida Kahlo With No Explanatory Health Issues.

Evan: You’d do it anyway, da Vinci On Invigoration Draught, don’t lie to the nice people, you’re bad at it.

Severus: (Spike-equivalent of XD, which presents as a raised eyebrow and amused glint)

Evan: (lofty) You also shouldn’t rag on me about coffee, because you aren’t just coffee-pickled yourself, you marinate your eggs in it.

Severus: They’re called tea eggs.

Evan: But you make them _in coffee_.

Severus: Sometimes, yes. With only cardamom, cinnamon and cloves instead of the usual spice mix. It makes a nice change. And it only gets in through cracks in the shell, you don’t bang the whole egg bare in the pot.

Evan: Anyway, you have a coffee pot at the lab. A much bigger one.

Severus: Which we fill with _St. Mungo’s_ coffee.

Evan: …Ah.

Severus: (helpful, in case he didn’t get it the first time, ie: grinding the point in) And drink of dire desperation, shuddering the while.

Evan: But you could make more coffee yourself when you get home, and you don’t, you make tea!

Severus: I’m certainly not going to make a full pot in the evening, but there are days after which the option would be welcome. All you’d have to do is cast a second refilling charm before you take the last of it.

Evan: …Nope, not falling for this, you’d go for it every day and never sleep again.

Severus: …Isn’t that to your benefit?

Evan: (is noble and strong) Not falling for that either. (with feeling) Have you _met_ yourself when you haven’t gotten enough sleep?

Severus: I’ve met _you_ when you haven’t. You walk into bushes and then curse them for their impertinence in snatching at your robes. (eyecrinkly smirk)

Evan: And we will let that _one time_ go…

Severus: On or about the thirty-fifth of Neversoever. (considerably wider smirk)

Evan: (sigh) Right. Well, in your case, all the poor things have to do is look at you funny.

 _A/N: For the record, it has already been established that Severus is fully capable of enchanting coffee-pots with refilling charms that work over a duration rather than for a single use. Read: Severus has set up his life so there is no coffee when he gets home_ on purpose _, Evan knows that, and they are having this squabble anyway. Take from that what you will._

 

 

James: Well. I was brought up properly—

Lily: If he says so himself…

James: —and I do like a full English.

Lily: However, he has very, er…. let’s call it ‘graciously’ allowed that he and the boys aren’t in daily Quidditch training anymore.

James: (sulkily) We play when we can.

Lily: Yes, deerheart, but you’ve already admitted it’s not the same thing so let’s not go over it again, shall we?

James: (still sullen about it but also mollified and somewhat sheepish)

_[Severus: …I am so proud._   
_Evan: …Right, what did she do to him just there? o.O_   
_Severus: I have no idea. That makes it better!]_

James: (slyly) It’s not as if I don’t get _any_ exercise…

_[Severus: (looks at Evan)_   
_Evan: (looks at his revolted expression) …I don’t care if you like her, if he’s murdered my best euphemism for me, he dies._   
_Severus: (hastily) Oh, he has, he has!]_

Lily: _Ha,_ if you had your way we’d never get any work done for ‘exercise.’ Although, even there, of late… I’m considering being offended, actually.

James: I don’t want to squash the sproglet!

Lily: Oh, so it’s not unflattering, just smothering.

James: …REMUS HALP!

Lily: (laughs) At any rate, he did agree we could cut down on the sausages and bacon and fried bread. So we have a lot of mushrooms and tomatoes and toast and, in his case, beans. (dry) He’s full of those.

James: And jam. (loyally) Lily makes excellent jam. She puts herbs and flowers and things in with the fruit sometimes, it makes it just a little different. Very good.

Lily: (demure) I learned with an expert at garden-raiding.

James: (looks proud of her, as this has gone completely over his head) Honorary Marauder behavior, hear hear.

Lily: (sudden suspicious coughing fit) (slightly strangled, with slightly-evil sweet smile) Thank you, Jamie.

James: (beneficent with kiss to forehead) Well deserved, well deserved.

Lily: (eyes him and bites lips wickedly, but passes)

Lily: We do usually stick with that sort of thing, and eggs. We tried a few other things, but we couldn’t keep the cat away from the kippers and the muesli experiment was, er, not a success.

James: (gags demonstratively) We have the best eggs in the world, though.

Lily: Well, they are good, although their origin was disgusting.

James: I don’t know what women have against eating leftovers in the morning.

Lily: It depends on the leftovers. _I_ don’t know how you could even _think_ about having curry for breakfast, _ugh_.

James: It was good! And kedgeree’s _traditional!_

Lily: _Ugh._ At any rate, I caught him at it and… (shakes head)

James: But after she’d finished yelling at me for being manly she started putting curry powder in the eggs. It’s excellent.

Lily: Sirius says we should put sultanas in, but I’m happy to report that even James isn’t as insane as he is, and I have not yet been begged to do this.

James: No fear, not happening, Sirius is definitely mental.

_A/N: Look, I'm just happy they were content with MST3King that conversation instead of horning in._

 

Bellatrix: Breakfast is for children and peasants. In the event of rising more than an hour before luncheon, a cup of tea is quite sufficient.

 

Tom: (very smug) It is within the Dark Lord’s power to have freshly squeezed orange juice every day if he so desires, _and_ bacon. The very shadow of the name of skimmed, tinned, or powdered milk will result in tortures beyond imagining.

 

1990s!Severus: I begin with coffee and end with a tisane of tranquility—to the layman, green tea with skullcap, linden, king’s crown, and lemon balm. As I must breakfast in the Great Hall, my selection of solid food is gleaned from what the elves have put in front of me and (sigh) therefore somewhat dependent on Albus’s tastes. This can be offputting, even when I am hungry at that hour, which isn’t always the case. If I find myself able to eat but the table is choked with grease and sedatory grain products, there is, of course, always the option of asking an elf for something to eat between classes, such as an egg or apple or cup of broth, or one of the compact vegetables which can be eaten raw, such as carrots, cucumbers, and onions.

In particular, I find it useful to keep a bunch of radishes or a plate of sliced bell pepper or fennel handy. As long as one remembers to silence the crunch magically, some such small bite can be a life-saver while the students are _safely_ occupied or trying to avoid catching my eye. I have heard nuts praised as grazing food for their protein content, but enough of a mouthful to be at all satisfying would take too much chewing to be practical in that situation, and in any case, they leave a heavy aftertaste. In most cases, those classes put an unpleasant enough taste in my mouth as is.

 

Lucius: (shrugs) Oh, we might have anything. Narcissa likes crêpes, but those are quite versatile so we don’t get bored. I like salmon in the morning, myself, but it might be apples in a good cheese, or with cinnamon, or asparagus with béarnaise sauce, or berries and cream, or even bacon and eggs if we’re feeling nostalgic for school. Or we might have an egg dish of some sort, perhaps a quiche or soufflé, or scones or croissants or something of that sort, or pain perdu.

Severus: Which they do not make with stale bread, which would improve egg-absorption, because they do not understand the concept of re-purposing leftovers. Loaves of bread made in that house are precisely calculated to be eaten at one sitting, it’s ridiculous.

Lucius: One gets more crust that way.

Severus: It’s still ridiculous.

Lucius: The elves take great pride in the quality of their service.

Severus: The elves have also convinced themselves that a monogrammed uniform made specifically for them, personally, to wear upon their bodies, is not a garment or in the category of ‘clothes’ because it more closely resembles a pillowcase than a set of robes or trousers. It’s called a _coping mechanism in reaction to a power imbalance_. Specifically, rationalization.

Lucius: …Of course, if Severus is over, he gets up at the crack of dawn and bullies these selfsame elves he’s so sorry for out of the kitchen.

Severus: I'm not _sorry_ for them; there’s nothing ignoble about service. While they have no objection, I have no opinion. I simply acknowledge the consequences of living the role that they do in a rigid feudal system.

Lucius: (ignores) We end up with cinnamon-encrusted, er, they were too thick to be called crisps, or baked bananas with coconut all over them, or curried eggs, or porridge made with miso broth and edamame, or frittata-esque affairs with tomatoes and olives and peppers in. So, as I said, it might be _anything._ He claims it’s for the good of our souls but in fact it’s because he wouldn’t do these things to Lance without trying them out on hapless test subjects first, and because our kitchen is larger than his with more shiny appliances.

Severus: It’s true, I don’t have a pressure cooker. I don’t know why _you_ have a pressure cooker. Your elves don’t know how to use it; I asked them; and you two certainly don’t. If you were going to learn to cook at all you’d do it all by wand.

Lucius: It’s the principle of the thing. All one’s rooms should be well stocked.

Severus: You bought it specifically to encourage me to experiment, admit it. And the terrine. You _liked_ the menemen, _and_ the alfredo porridge.

Lucius: I admit to enjoying the way you cackle like a mad alchemist and shame my elves into slightly more _restrained_ fits of creativity.

Severus: Your elves don’t need help. Your elves are insane. They put bacon inside the scotch eggs.

Lucius: That’s not insane, that’s inspired.

Severus: That’s a heart attack waiting to happen, M. Pain-chocolat Diabetes-in-Training.

Lucius: Eat a waffle, Grim Reaper.

Severus: Fiberless carbohydrates in the morning are why you need a nap before lunch.

Lucius: Go away before I pour a pot of Turkish coffee up your nose, infant.

Severus: See if I make you meneman again.

Lucius: You fill me with inexpressible relief.

Severus: And second-hand coffee!

Lucius: …Second-hand!!!!?


	10. Finite Rotatum the world, I want to get off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for chapters [56](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/5516648) and [57](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/5697125) was _magic_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to those who are only getting their replies here. In part it was my midterms and some RL stuff, but honestly, part of it was also the characters staring at some of these (very interesting!) questions and going, "Uhhhhhh, I already took my OWLs. C-YA, laters, and TTFN."
> 
> I was thinking of calling the chapter Hogwarts: The Magical Place, but I think that reference fails at evoking the appropriate dystopic creepiness when the place in question is, in fact, magical.

**Melodyssister:**...A connection between needle crafts and magic fascinates me. Also, in canon, knitting immediately references Hermione and S.P.E.W., as well as Dumbledore. So another question: do you see a connection between wards and house elves?

 

1997!Severus: I don’t know how you got your hands on my blueprints for Operation Tartarus, but your ill-advised inquisitiveness leaves your future narrowed to one choice: death or Obliviation.  And make no mistake—before that choice is enacted, _I will find out._

 

* * *

** Melodyssister ** : In the previous chapter you mentioned a connection between knitting/embroidery and wards. Could you expand on that? 

Dumbledore: Certainly, my dear.Yarn or thread is treated so as to be magically connected to the castle stones—there’s a process involving a potion and the ley line node and earth from atop that node or one of the lines leading into it.The headmaster or headmistress, once accepted by the castle, is able by working with this—let’s call it thread—to cement any repairs the house-elves or staff make to the castle proper, re-affirm the wards, reinforce any areas that need it, that sort of thing.The method doesn’t matter, knitting or tatting.In most cases it’s simply that every stitch or knot adds strength that will go where the castle needs it to; the connection between headmaster and Hogwarts ensures that.But one can narrow one’s focus and direct changes by focusing one’s will, if necessary.It’s all in Hogwarts: A History.(cheerfully)It’s something of a continuous process, I’m afraid, but on the up-side, one is never caught short at gift-giving times.

 

* * *

 

** Lupin5th:  ** theoretical basics on the example for the ward-bypass: she "only" drew the sign(s) by, err, nothing, or rather nothing but will/intent/magic, I assume? this would make it a one-time effect, where-as, if it were drawn with any physical means (ink, different pencils, chalks etc) would make a more permanent, hm, thingy to be used? I´d guess it is also a question of the effect and the skill of the caster, whether actual, physical "lines" are needed, or a good idea or just make it plain easier?

Narcissa: (scornfully) Well, I suppose, if you _need_ a crutch.If you’re, oh, thirteen and have never practiced drawing an array before.Or there’s yellow on your scarf.

Severus: Intent is important.If no physical medium is used, intent and skill are everything when it comes to duration.The array or runes can’t be disturbed except by other magic.If a physical medium _is_ used, and the spell is _drawn_ to be permanent rather than one-use or set-expiration, its potential permanence would certainly be a factor in the duration of the spell.

Evan: He means: the spell lasts while it’s whole if it’s meant to.Chalk erases easier than ink.

Severus: That’s what I said.

Evan: I said it faster. :D

Severus: (warm) Lazy-arse.

Evan: ^______^

* * *

** Lupin5th: ** Re unmappable stuff and how wizarding places are hidden. Is it a contraction of space, in a sense of folding a formerly big space so that from the outside it is no more than a negligible measuring error, nope, there was never another street/estate/whatever here? Or is it a stretching of such a small space and using it for more? or are both employed in different ways, e.g. old estates that were already there get "folded" and thus disappeared where-as folks living in a more recent setting and/or within their small house decided to stretch it to have more space? or is it entirely different than what I am guessing here?

Regulus: (wide eyes) I don’t know, I just live here!!!!

Severus: There’s some of several of those.Wizards have been living under the rose and the radar for a very long time; they’ve come up with many solutions.In the case of buildings under spells like Unplottable charms and Fidelius, often the actual space is unaffected but people outside the secret are unable to be aware of it.In uncountable flats in London and New York, the area inside is not _stretched,_ although the floor and walls and such might be, depending on the caster.There’s just _more_ space than the surface area accounts for.Don’t even try, you’ll just do your brain an injury.It’s an insult to reason, but sometimes one actually does have to accept that the answer is ‘it’s magic.’Or perhaps learn quantum physics.I don’t have time.

  
 

* * *

** Melodyssister ** :Absolutely, there is a lot of needlecraft in HPverse. May I add a request for Eileen's take on the subject? Knitting appears to be something she does in the company of Muggles, and there is the Prince family dressing-gown, perhaps another kind of needlecraft magic?

Eileen: (sullenly) The dressing gown was a wedding gift for my great-great-great-great-Grandfather, no one in the family made it.Needlework used to be what all the rich witches did, back when the muggles wore pointy hats too.It takes charms fair well, and the fibres can work with potions if you know how to work them with the dyes.It’s not a Prince thing specifically, but Mam—my mother makes—made lace.Makes, I suppose.Lord knows my father left her sod-all else to do.

* * *

 

  **LittleBabyDamien** : We have seen a lot of Severus' creativity in various areas of magic. Who else has been creative, whether in potions, charms, hexes, or even in non-magical areas?Or, perhaps, even devious? And would they admit to their inventiveness, or keep it secret from their nearest and dearest? Do any of the muggles or squibs have brilliant ideas that would be magical world shaking, if only they had the magic to take their concepts to completion?

Marauders: WE HAVE!!!

Sirius: And we are not misers!We now share our largess with the WORLD!

James: Well, the Aurors.And the joke-shop crowd.  
Remus: At very reasonable market prices.

Peter: Actually, the toys are rather overpriced and the stuff they make for the Aurors is practically at-cost.(proud, a little wistful) But that’s how it ought to be.

James: You could come join us anytime you wanted, Pete.

Peter: I _do_ come help when I get a chance, but I need a _stable_ job, James.

Sirius: Pfaugh!Boring!

Remus: You can afford to say that, Sirius.Emphasis on _afford_.

Sirius: …Yeah, all right…

Peter:…Did he just say ‘fog’ or do we need to wash out his mouth again?

Severus: Lily used to… I’m not sure how to put it.Put an enchanting spin on ordinary things, I suppose.She’d do that all the time.Make colors better, or have leaves and pollen and things dance in the wind.And I think she altered one of her frocks into about fifteen outfits that were different-enough one year.She was always picking up random nonsense and turning it into other random nonsense that was attractive or thoughtful.Sluggy never stops going on about that stupid fish, but it wasn’t something astonishingly special she did because she adored him.She left breakfast in such a rush that day she forgot to put her pumpkin juice down—I think Mulciber had a hand in that—and she just decided to ‘do something nice for someone’ with it and an extra lily from the ingredients table instead of throwing them away.Not considering that a person might not want to be stuck with a pet to care for, although in fact of course it made him practically her slave for life because the charmwork was so graceful and it looked so much like sucking-up.It was absolutely typical and meaningless, except in that it _was_ typical.

Eileen: (looks at Tobias watching Dr. Who) Please don’t get him started.

* * *

 

  **Lupin5th:** Do brooms "only" fly or could they also propel themselves under water?

Evan: Er… maybe _they_ could propel themselves under water, but you’d lose a whole lot of aerodynamic sort of thingy with a wizard on. Also, I’m not sure a bubblehead charm would stand up to that kind of speed. At least, the good brooms _can_ go slow but they’re not really built for it, and the down-market ones, I think, would get soggy bristles and quite possibly warp.And there’s a lot more to bump into, with more teeth, and less visibility.Please do not suggest this to Spike.He might think it was a brilliant stealth idea and I sort of like him.

* * *

 

** Melodyssister:  ** I'd like to add: how do wands work? What is the difference between wanded and wandless magic? To what extent does Potions require a wand, if at all, and does an affinity for one kind of wandless magic imply affinity for other kinds, too? How much wandless magic is there is crafts like tailoring and even cooking? Do Madam Malkin or Florian Fortescue have special wands?  


 

Severus: As to the first, if you mean ‘why does putting a piece of an magical animal in the middle of a wooden stick work,’ there’s a great deal of literature about magical resonance that explains why combinations of animals and wood and length are likely to work better for people with certain magical tendencies and power levels and physical potentials and tendencies towards health difficulties.The answer to the core question, though, if I may employ that phrase, is,‘Sod if we know.’  


Now, what wands _do_ is focus and direct one’s magic.So the difference between wanded magic and childrens’ wandless magic is that wanded magic is much more efficient.Child magic is the result of the child’s whole force of will focusing on one feeling or goal, with the force of their magic behind it.They may mean to do a thing or they may be merely expressing their feelings.It is, however, possible for an adult, through practice, to learn to achieve a more or less equivalent mental focus to that they would achieve through a wand, and cast spells that would ordinarily use a wand without one.This is what’s commonly called wandless magic, as opposed to magic focused and disciplined through other means such as runes or in potions, and as opposed to mind-magic and child- _like_ will-based magic, both of which are conflated with malicious or sacrificial spells under the name of the Dark Arts—although less mind magic than the others, largely because most people don’t think it really exists. (smirk)  


At most levels, brewing does not require a wand, although (fervently) they make ingredient acquisition and preparation, and control of the cauldron’s temperature, _immeasurably_ easier.At the more advanced levels, however, one either needs a wand or about twelve assistants to get the ingredients into the cauldron at the right intervals, and sometimes the temperature needs quite rapid and dramatic adjustments.One also, at the more advanced levels, often needs to stir runes into the potion or trace them over its surface.Most often one uses a stirring stick of an appropriate material, but sometimes a wand is most effective.

In crafts like tailoring and cooking where the product is not inherently magical but can be made so, no wand-work is necessary, but a great deal is often used.Spells can speed the work and make it more accurate.They can make both mundane and magical effects possible that hands alone, or even hands and machines alone, could not.Any wandmaker would tell you that every wand is special, as each one is unique.Wizards don’t do factories.However, if the question is ‘do craftsmen acquire wands specifically to aid in their crafts,’ no, we don’t.Witches and wizards use the wands that lean and spark to our touch.

Evan: (yawns and stretches) My Spike-senses tell me you suddenly out of the _interminable_ blue said something interesting.

Severus: Only if you’re an Ollivander.

Evan: Oooh, talk wands to me.

Severus: …Tea.I need tea.

* * *

 

** Alex ** : Wait. Is Lily implying that James was getting *gasp* chubby? :p

Lily: He’s not getting there yet, no, and I’d rather he didn’t before he hits fifty at least, thank you.Or have a heart attack, either.Maybe those are easier for wizards to get past, but they’re scary.

* * *

 

** Lupin5th:  ** what sort of international trade is there? and how does it work? do they still use ships only they are hidden and most likely capable of flight? =) (sry, but I couldn´t resist, flying ships are just awesome)

Evan:…Er… LOTS.Although most often it’s between individuals or individual small businesses; mostly wizarding communities can produce the necessities for themselves, so there isn’t as much need for governments to do or broker a lot of large-scale trading. 

Lucius: (smirks) Except of money and information.

Evan: Ha, except those, right.Mostly it works by floo; there are some quite big fireplaces at the ministry for things that can’t be shrunk easily.Animals that don’t like to go through the flames generally get blindfolded or dosed.I gather some of the black-market stuff goes by flying carpet.Which is illegal in this country, of course, but…

Lucius: Someone really ought to do something about that.Because carpet rides make for such pleasant family outings, of course.

Evan: (tolerant) Of course.

****

* * *

 

** Alex ** : I am rather hoping that Evans & Severus would somehow manage to ride off into the sunset when all is said and done. Severus can plan for that right?!

Severus: That is my plan, with the exception of riding off anywhere.At least, we do enjoy going riding, but then we give the horses or Abraxans back to Luke and Narcissa and go home.

* * *

** Hwyla ** : I would like to know just why [Lily] thinks of Evan as 'creepy'. I really don't recall anything in the previous stories that I would interpret as 'creepy' other than just something that Gryffindors would say. But not his actual actions.

Lily: It's not anything he _did_ , exactly.It's just... his voice is all drawly, and he acts friendly but the whole time he's always looking at you either like you're getting in the way of his nap or he wants to cut you up and feed you to the cat because you're too nasty for him to eat himself.And the way he moves, it's like he owns _everything_ , and even if he were going to ask permission to use something of yours, that you made, it would only be because he was raised to be polite even to bugs.And he's always so, so slow, so leisurely, and that is incredibly creepy, because, let me tell you, I've seen that man fight James for the snitch, and he is not slow.And (hugely disturbed) Sev hugged him. _Sev!_ You can't tell ME that's natural.

Severus: It’s quite natural.For a space alien.

Lily: …Huh?

Severus: (smug mona lisa eyebrows)

* * *

 

** Duj ** :  I t's no secret that JK has hugely feminised Snape in canon; the hair, the hysteria, the drama, the lability, the lovelornness, and of course, that hideous Patronus. So it's not surprising that Narcissa sees it too.

Narcissa: Well, darling, I don't know about any of that.He's a bit loud for a generic-Slytherin, but that's why he's a spitting cobra.We do get those, you know.If he can do a patronus charm, I’ve never seen it. I wouldn’t have thought he could, the pet, as blue and grumbly as he gets.As for his hair, quite a lot of boys have been cutting their that length these days, or were while we were at school, at least, and there's not a woman in the world who'd be seen dead using his soap on hers.Only one can't help thinking of him that way because he's so sensitive to nuance—and, honestly, darling, even Slytherin wizards who are worlds better at people than he is aren't reactive to people's moods like that.It might be a compliment if the poor lamb could do anything with it but have his little feelings hurt and bristle, if only he'd work harder on making a better impression!And he's in what's a witch's profession both symbolically and traditionally although (disapprovingly) not really in practice, today, and (dimples) he's such a marvelously catty bitch, don't you think?

* * *

 

**Very Small Prophet** : Really, Narcissa! Severus’s magical reserves are evidence of his half-bloodedness. If you’d just take off your pureblood blinders and read a freshman genetics test… Spike is a perfect F1 hybrid—pure wizard on one side, pure muggle on the other, with predictably spectacular results. If he were to have kids they wouldn’t be anything special, but that’s how hybrid vigor works. It’s only there for the first generation. If you wanted Draco to be in impressive wizard instead of a wimp, you should have held your nose and cuckolded Lucius with a nice platinum blond muggle.

Narcissa: Really, darling! Those books are written by MUGGLES, you know!

Severus: (is torn between laughing hysterically and headdesking repeatedly very hard)

Lucius: (thinks back frantically to Beltane of '79, with reference to did Narcissa leave his sight for ONE SECOND...?)

Severus: (smacks him upside the head)

Narcissa: (placidly) Thank you, Severus.

Lucius: I didn't say anything!!!!

Severus: (pats) 

** Very Small Prophet ** : (Pats Lucius's hand) You have nothing to worry about. It's not like Draco has a special talent like being a Metamorphmagus or anything.

Andromeda: Actually, in that case he'd still have nothing to worry about. We were surprised when Dora started changing colors, but it wasn't completely out of nowhere. Cissy had Black-standard black hair and hadn't shown any magic till she was three and decided her mirror was just doing it to be mean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for [chapter 58](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/5879006) is _sneakery_. Questions are very welcome: do please remember that the questions go to the _characters_.


	11. A chapter so sneaky you could put laces in it and call it a trainer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for [chapter 58](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/5879006) was _sneakery_. One might apologize to Messieurs Blackadder and Baldrick for the chapter title, but they're rather in the red on their apologies ledger.

**Psyche Girl:** Harry (bless his Gryffondorish shortsighted heart) essentially gave a Bond-villian-type monologue on the Deathly Hallows at least, in front of a good percentage of both sides' armies, which may or may not have referenced Horcruxes as well (I am SO sorry for the inaccuracy; I have a terrible memory and no reference materials to hand). Would Occlu/legilimency come out in the various Death Eaters' trials at all? How would this all change the shape of wizarding society? I mean, from Harry's perspective by the time of the epilogue things have reverted basically to normal, but then from Harry's perspective things like the way _his own government functions_ are treated as incidental and relatively unimportant unless they are directly, immediately affecting him, so he's not necessarily the most reliable source.

 

Severus: There are two things one must understand about The Boy Who Lived To Give Me Migraines.

First: he is a lodestone and a powerful shaper of public opinion and policy, but he has not the first bloody clue how to use his position, his dubious charisma, his reputation, his fame, his friends, his resenters, or his would-be toadies. Nor does he think he should. This creates a power vacuum that others _do_ know how to use, and want to, and will. There is very little reason to believe that his sabbatical with Granger and Weasley taught him much in this particular arena, whether or not he grew in other areas.

Second: the boy is as gullible as a Lilliputian beach strewn with bread crusts at low tide in seagull-breeding season. The psychologists call it _undifferentiated_ : he believes what he wants to believe, believes that what he hopes and what he fears will come to pass. Lying is completely unnecessary; one merely has to look sardonically at him and he constructs whole worlds in his head. And if you think I'm the only one who knows it, you're mad.

In sum: no one has to call him a liar or a bad person to bury any suggestion that the mind magics are more than dark legend, if the Ministry or the traditional families with surviving power don't want it known they survive in modern times—at least as more than some twisted power that was unique to Riddle and died with him. They need only gently suggest that Albus and I might have confused him a bit, and if they do it right he'll at least half-believe it himself.

And then they can get back to using him like a brain-damaged ha'penny whore. Which will be considerably easier now that the goblins will have claimed his vault and quite possibly his life in compensation for their dragon and the integrity of their bank.

* * *

 **Lupin5th** : do artists sign their portraits? Like, somewhere down in the corner of the picture a name engraved on a vase or somesuch? Or does it depend? Or do they not, ever, because, err, reasons? I mean, if they are famous for it, it would make sense to have some sort of "this portrait was done by x.y.Rosier the z-th" somewhere? maybe even Portraits being proud of who painted them, and all that? Sorry that I'm still poking in the painting corner, I really don't mean to bother, just ignore it if it would only get out of hand to open that can of worms. And of course Evan is not the most, err, motivated to, without proper reason, do anything so bothersome as obvious things. =)

 

Severus: (sardonic) No, he’s not, but signing one’s name isn’t all _that_ much work.

Evan: Well, you do mostly have to flip the canvas over.

Severus: So awful for you. Tedious. Fatiguing. Heartbreaking, backbreaking labor.

Evan: :p

Evan: Yes, we sign our names. Unless the painting was micromanaged by the client and we’re utterly humiliated by it, and even then most would still sign, oh, ‘Gervais Nott-Easington to the order of Lycander Bullstrode,’ I think was my favorite. A little passive-aggressive, the extra L, and he got away with it, too. Although I’m not sure whether that was because Bulstrode never looked carefully or assumed artists can’t spell.

Severus: Or himself couldn’t spell.

Evan: Be nice.

Severus: Why?

Evan: Search me. It’s something one says.

Severus: (g) Ah.

Evan: (grins back) But having a good reputation is as useful for a portraitist as it is for any other craftsman in business. Most of the time, on a living portrait, you do it on a still miniature—to make forgeries harder, you know—under the frame, so the client won’t have to live with your name bumping around their living space. And then if the paint fades, your descendants can look at the miniature and re-paint your carpet properly and so on. Sometimes, when you get famous, a client _will_ want your name, as you say, on a vase or somesuch, as a status symbol. Or when they think you have enough potential that you might be famous sometime in the future, or just like your style and want to promote you. Nearly all my grandfather’s clients have wanted his name on the front for the last fifty years, usually somewhere prominent. I’m nowhere near his level yet, but I’ve been asked to put mine in a shadowy corner or somewhere like that a few times. Mostly by bet-making types.

Severus: But once or twice already by reasonably intelligent people.

Evan: …Excuse us. (tackles Severus)

Severus: GAH!

 

* * *

 **LittleBabyDamien:** A question for Lucius, as well as anyone else who would like to answer: is doing something sneaky, or otherwise, in the, shall we call it the back seat, of a family flying carpet, something that goes on in the wizarding world?

 

Lucius: Where carpets are legal, it’s certainly possible to whisk one’s inamorata away for a romantic picnic. One can also do this by broom, of course, and either the enforced proximity or the option of getting one’s blood up with a race to the spot can be… stimulating.

Narcissa: (mutters) Oh, yes, that’s the picnic basket in my pocket, beloved, _and_ I’m happy to see you.

Lucius: (gallant) I always am.

 

* * *

 **Eldritch** : I've been wondering how Severus thought the interdepartmental memo went down with his senior staff (and also what his senior staff actually thought of it).

 

Severus: It was going to entirely depend on the outcome. If I died and Potter was a complete fumbling idiot, was dishonorable, or decided to respect my privacy, I assumed they’d burn the thing, distrusting everything in it even if they bothered to read so much as the first page. Which would have been remarkably unfortunate for them, but Hogwarts badly needs a re-design one way or another. And, really, as nosy as he is and as liable to shout at his enemies whatever he thinks will most get under their skin that isn’t an outright epithet, I felt it a safe bet.

If I died and Potter did tell them what was what, I hoped they’d take the thing as my will, as intended, and use it as a guideline. Martyrdom has its privileges.

There would not have been an ideal outcome on any front had I survived too badly incapacitated, in one way or another, to be taken seriously as a force in the political and reconstructive equations. Under those circumstances they would have been most likely to pat me on the head and tell me how glad they were I’d been thinking of the school’s good while the children were being tortured, pointed stare, but none of my ideas were practicable and everyone wanted to get back to normal. Or, depending on the form of incapacitation, spat into my cell, one never knows.

That leaves the unlikely event of my surviving in enough resembling one piece to maneuver successfully to retain my position. In that case I planned to sit down with the four of them as soon as the castle had a working infrastructure again, tell them we had a week to turn my guideline into a working curriculum because after that we were going to have to start hiring and training people and wooing public favor and so on, so as to begin full-tilt in the autumn, and hammer it out with them, soliciting opinions and expertise from the rest of the faculty as appropriate. That time limit would have been absurd, of course, but it would have been something to be proud of if achievable, and they would have dropped dead of delighted shock when I allowed them as much as an extra week, if necessary.

 

Pomona: I couldn’t keep my eyes open for half of it, tell you the truth. Severus can go on. It certainly sounded as if he’d given it a lot of thought, but I think he’s seriously underestimated the value of a good grounding in Herbology in today’s world. And I don’t really _want_ to run an extracurriculars program with Horace.

 

Filius: I thought they were good ideas, even if some of them might be quite a challenge to pull off. It really is time we did something about History of Magic, for example, and that was the most considerate way to go about it _I’ve_ ever heard proposed. That is, of course it didn’t sound that way, but it never does with Severus; he only speaks Academical and Junior Curmudgeon. And maybe once things quiet down I _will_ have time to run that dueling club myself. I think Severus or Min and I could give them much better lessons than ‘Why you don’t first annoy Slytherins and then give them a free slap at you’ like Lockhart did. I’m quite looking forward to going over the Charms curriculum with Severus, actually, as long as he remembers it’s _my_ subject. I’ve never known anyone like him for wringing all the uses out of a spell.

 

Horace: (beaming) Severus knows what to _do_ with people! How to use other peoples’ talents! And work with what they like to do, not just bore against the grain! I’d never have thought it, never!

Severus: I'm flattered.  Really.  You're just so complimentary.  It really shows how you keep all your puppets smiling on their strings.

Horace: Ah-ah, now, we both know you didn't <i>want</i> me, or anyone, to think it, don't we, m'boy?

Severus: ...(glare)

 

Minerva: Did you notice he didn’t touch Transfiguration? I noticed he didn’t touch Transfiguration. He’s up to something he thinks I’m going to want to break a bottle over his head for, and he’s hoping leaving me out of the acid-bath and talking about me as if I were a battle-ax will be damage control. If that man thinks I can be buttered up, he has another think coming.

 

* * *

 **Eldritch** : This one's for younger Severus and his friends, and the Marauders (you're all just going to have too keep yourselves brief), what would be your weapon of choice if wands weren't an option?

 

Regulus: If you do a garrote right, break the neck instead of suffocating them, they barely have time to know what happened. Which is, er, really the best outcome sometimes.

 

James: A sword, of course!

Remus: Ploughshare! Oh, sorry, I thought we were doing word associations.

James: No, we're girding ourselves in the best traditions of Gryffindor to make Godric, Queen, and country proud, only without wands.

Remus: If we didn't have wands, we wouldn't have magic, and if we were going to involve ourselves in muggle wars I think I'd rather be on the bomb squad or the field evacuation teams than the front lines. Seems more constructive.

Sirius: Okay, Goody-Four-Paws, but you'd need a weapon just in case, right?

Remus: You'd think they get guns...

Sirius: If you say so, Loony-Moony.

Remus: (rolls eyes) And you'll be joining Prongs in his hundred-pound platemail, I suppose?

Sirius: Yeah, but on a horse, and my sword will be bigger. Or a halberd.

Pete: Everyone knew your sword would be bigger, Sirius. (beat) At least, the metal one.

Sirius: Hahahaha. What do you want, those claws you put on the back of your hands, so you can dig tunnels with them?

Peter: (thinks: no, arrows) No, I'd want a machete.

James: ...Well, that's, er, businesslike.

Peter: Look, I'm shorter than you lot. Shortswords against broadswords are rubbish, and machetes are more useful than scimitars. And not as easy to break in half.

James: Well, stamina is in high demand.

Peter: (smug) Believe it.

Sirius: Sure we believe it. The Hat told us what Hufflepuffs like the first day we got to school. And you go where the market is, right?

Peter: (much tighter smile)

Remus: ...I'm almost sure the question was about fighting and war-type weapons, fellows.

 

Lucius: The stock market. And the media.

Severus: So… exactly what you do now.

Lucius: I keep telling you, Severus, money is the only real power there is.

Severus: You keep telling me that, but tell me this: what exactly do you expect me to do about it?

Lucius: If you’d just let me make a few investments for you… put a marketing firm on your patents…

Severus: I will play the Finances roulette when hell freezes over, and I’ve seen what your marketing firm does to poor defenseless potions. It puts them in pastels, Lucius. PASTELS!

Lucius: And they sell off the shelves, Severus. OFF THE SHELVES.

Severus: I am making a long-term investment in my reputation as a serious brewer who does not make an embarrassment of himself scrambling after the quick galleon. I expect an excellent payout in a few years in the form of—

Lucius: A job.

Severus: A _good_ job. Perhaps customers for my own business, later on. I don’t know how you do without work, honestly, I’d be crying with boredom within the week.

Lucius: Lobbying and managing an estate are both work. So is being on boards, if you’re on enough of them. You needn’t sneer because I make it look glamorous.

Severus: Let’s not pretend you wouldn’t have a swordstick.

Lucius: It would be an umbrella. Muggles rarely use walking sticks anymore, I understand.

 

Narcissa: Oh, one tries not to be so clumsy as to end up in a situation where one needs weaponry. And if all else failed, someone who tried a physical attack might use one’s weapon against one. I’m only a weak woman, after all.

Evan: You’re a rampaging alligator temporarily submerged in the river like a log, coz.

Narcissa: (fans self demurely) You say the most ridiculous things, Evvie.

Evan: Come on, admit it, you want a poison-ring charm bracelet, and poisoned needles that zip out of your shoes when you kick people.

Narcissa: (drops fan, big eyes) Do they make those?!

Evan: You married money, Cissy.

Narcissa: (reveries)  
Narcissa: And for you?

Evan: If Lucius gets to say money, I think I should be allowed to say political cartoons.

Narcissa: You would be, darling, but everyone knows Severus would be dictating them to you. They wouldn’t be _your_ weapons, they’d be his. Try again.

Evan: (shrugs) I suppose a tranquilizer gun, then. Or a taser.

Narcissa: …Ugh, Evvie.

Evan: Yes, I know it’s awfully muggle, but look, that way you get your obstacle down and you can decide more at your leisure whether to kill them or tie them to a public fence in their pants with a message painted on or take them back to their wife and leave a note in their sock saying ‘remember I had you at my mercy’ or ‘I have photos’ or whatnot. And if you’re found with it, you haven’t been found with a lethal weapon.   Much less trouble all ‘round!

 

Severus: Sword for you, too, Lily?

Lily: Pen is mightier than!

Severus: Truer words.

Lily: I wouldn’t mind a set of brass knuckles, though. It would make slapping people a lot more satisfying. Or if we’re talking a battle situation, I think maces are good. What about you, fancy a nice flail?

Severus: It’s been suggested… (shrugs) It’s an attractive weapon, when the conditions are right—though nunchaku are more versatile— but you know me. Whatever would work best if there’s time to plan, whatever’s handy if there’s not.

Lily: Including your skull.

Severus: Not for preference, but one’s own body is harder to lose than other weapons. Twisting their arm backwards behind their back is much more effective than most impact attacks, though, if you’re bare-handed, especially at your weight or mine. Or the little finger if you can manage it; get a grip on that and you’re _done_.

Lily: What if they’re in armor?

Severus: Pepper spray. Helmets have eye-holes.

Lily: And if they have a gas mask?

Severus: Then acid spray first. Or a salamander up the cuisses: more portable and biddable than a dragon. Don't look at me like that. The question specified no wands, not no magic.

Lily: Well, in that case you don’t need a salamander to give them a hotseat.

Severus: True, but I don’t like to advertise. I mean brag.

Lily: Okay, but what would your everyday standby be, if you didn’t have a wand? I already picked brass knuckles.

Severus: Circular steel knitting needles. With refillable syringe-reservoirs, since dreaming doesn’t cost. Spray base, needle point.

Lily: …Since when do you knit?

Severus: I don’t.

* * *

**LittleBabyDamien:** And for parents. What sort of sneaky activity from your child would you be appalled at, or horrified about? And what sort of sneaky behaviour would you think was cute, or would inspire pride in you? What would make you say, "Just wait until I get my hands on you", and what would make you say, "That's my boy!". Or girl. I especially want to hear from the Snapes. Because Severus, you know! But parents of Peter, or the Black girls, or anyone else who would like to respond, is welcome.

 

 James: (points at the books, crowing) That’s my boy!

Lily: (stares at the books) Oh, sweetheart, just WAIT till I get my hands on you.

James: (blinks) Aren’t you proud of him?

Lily: Of course! So, so proud. BURSTING. I’m going to hug him till he POPS and kiss him till he dies again of adolescent mortification. Then I’m going to ground him till he’s a thousand.

James: That’s a little extreme, Lils…

Lily: Oh, that’s just for giving into Adventure and Peer Pressure over the flying Ford Anglia. HE HAD AN OWL. AND HE COULD HAVE WAITED TWO MINUTES FOR BILLY’S MUM TO NOTICE. MR. WEASLEY WORKS AT THE MINISTRY. THEY HAVE FLOOS. Then we’ll start in on giving up after telling exactly one teacher there was a problem with the Philosopher’s Stone and deciding he had no option but to risk three children’s lives including his own just on the _teachers’_ protections, never mind who he thought could be waiting at the other end, worst or even best case! He _knew_ Severus had put one in, and he thought Sev was evil and vicious!

James: Snape is vicious.

Lily: Yes he can be, and at the time Harry thought he was also evil. Then there’s the lecture about feeling so entitled to a prefect’s badge after showing not the slightest interest in the rules, his schoolwork, or the younger students for four years straight, JAMES…

James: (coughs) That’s my boy? —Oi, wait, I got good marks!

Lily: But you and Sirius did all your studying at night and swore Rey and Pete to secrecy so no one could call you swots, love. It was pathetic.

James: (lamely) We had reputations to protect.

Lily: Your reputations were also pathetic. Now, Remus already guilt-tripped him about sneaking out to Hogsmeade with an alleged serial killer on the loose. He at least wrote about feeling horrible about that, so I suppose we don’t have to go over it again in detail, even though he CLEARLY didn’t actually internalize the message, but…

James: Go on, I’m listening, I’m just also making some tea, I know how parched you can get when you rant…

James: (whispers) Harry, if you ever see this, don’t worry: your Mum’s been known to ease off on a fellow. Even when she shouldn’t. Let her get it out of her system and cool down, that’s my advice. You don’t even have to tell her she’s right, just _don’t_ tell her she’s wrong.

 

Callisto: I can’t say I was particularly pleased when the Mulciber boy owled me that sketchbook full of Evan’s moonings over Severus. Of course we knew they were friends, and we took Narcissa’s word and Sirius’s anti-word that he was a worthwhile friend to have. However, Evan’s _letters_ had told us he’d been dating aggressively.

Narcissa: He’d been dating _alarmingly,_ Auntie Cal. Practically no discretion at all, except in making sure none of his dates thought they had a hook in him.

Callisto: Then I’m relieved he wasn’t lying to us, dear. Still, we had been pleased to hear he’d been doing a thorough survey of the marriage market in his own peer group, and we were _not_ pleased to see evidence that he had secretly been forming such a strong romantic attachment to a person of no name, vault, or connections, and with such problematic bloodlines.

Narcissa: I don’t know if you’ll be more or less pleased to hear this, Auntie, but I’m almost sure that he wasn’t intentionally keeping it a secret. Severus and Reggie and I think he hadn’t really _noticed_. You know how Evan can just go with the flow. We think he thought they were best friends who messed about a bit, at that point. It was making Severus more than a bit crazy, as a matter of fact.

Callisto: (closes her eyes tightly) …Less pleased, I think, dear, on balance.

Narcissa: (sympathy)  
Callisto: I must say, though, Narcissa, I find this a bit difficult to credit.

Narcissa: …That a man wouldn’t notice he’d been wrapped up and bow-tied?

Callisto: (laughs) No, of course not. That Severus hadn’t informed him. He is quite straightforward, I’ve noticed.

Narcissa: (politely incredulous) Force the question? When he was still interested in other people? Severus? Take a risk about _Evvie?_

Callisto: (considers this, then smiles very, very slightly, RADIATING smug)

 

Toby: I got a bit hopeful one time I found magazines under the floor under the lad’s bed. Then they turned out to be dressmaking catalogues. _Dressmaking_. Lord knows where he got ‘em. I was right depressed about it, all frothed up, till I picked up the last one. It had a note on the cover: “Serves you right for snooping, Da.” Stood the lads down the pub a round over that one, I don’t mind telling you.

Severus: (not charmed) I got them from various elderly ladies around town, who were delighted to do a loan-trade for magazines full of scantily clad young men.

Toby: (sour) …I was afraid of that.

Severus: (smirks) Actually, I didn’t give them anything. They just liked the idea of pulling one over on you, given what you were putting Mam through.

Toby: (sigh) (can live with that)

Severus: …Well, all right, Gammer Eckersall wanted more elderflower mead than was in any way decent. Largely because she was in harmony with your initial impression of what I wanted the catalogues for.

Toby: (twitch)

Severus: (dreamily) I do wish now I could have seen her face when Mr. Eckersall came home from your sousing and told everyone I’d used them as I’d told her I would, and she realized she could not, in fact, blackmail me over her fevered imaginings, as you’d told the truth to half Lancashire.

Toby: …Heh.

 

 

* * *

 **Eldritch** : And, speaking of sneaky, given Severus's habit of never sitting with his back to the door, how far has he progressed in the arts of wandless magic?

 

Severus: (inscrutable) I get by.

Lily: With a little help from my friends!

Severus: TAKE IT BACK TO LIVERPOOL!

 

* * *

 **Very Small Prophet** : does anyone (from any House) care to either defend or criticise the proposition that there is a necessary connection between ambition and sneakiness on the one hand, and courage and honesty on the other? I really don't see that the sneakiness/honesty axis enters into the characteristics usually assigned to Slytherin and Gryffindor. Discussing the supposed connection between hard work/loyalty and being warm and nurturing is optional. (I'm a Ravenclaw; I expect words to mean what they mean.)

 

Lily: It often takes courage to be honest.

Severus: It takes inhuman weirdness, is what it takes. People in a room with three or more peers who’ve said the same wrong thing will either agree or shut up.

Lily: So the ones who don’t are brave.

Severus: The ones who don’t have _more resistance to peer pressure._ Courage is acting despite fear. It’s different from intrepidity, and you shouldn’t assume someone’s being brave just because _you_ would have been afraid or uncomfortable in their shoes. It might be easy for them. Sometimes because they’re too damn stupid to be sensibly worried.

Lily: Well, how about, you can’t be called brave if you’re not honest with yourself?

Severus: …Well, one could probably manage some superficial acts of courage, but no, I suppose I’m with you fundamentally there.

Lily: Amazing.

Severus: Now you explain to me why ambition and, er, ‘sneakiness’ are inextricably linked, go on, have at it.

Lily: Well, because if a person wants something badly enough, and puts ambition above other values, there’s nothing they won’t do to get it, is there?

Severus: If they’re so short-sighted they make your husband look hawkish.

Lily: _Sev!_

Severus: What? He wears glasses. He’s nearsighted.

Lily: And I’m sure that’s exactly what you meant, too.

Severus: (innocence)

Lily: You can’t pull that look off.

Severus: Look, the trouble with manipulation, double-dealing, and cutting corners is that even when one is good enough at them or well-positioned enough to get away with them, they eventually prove to have consequences. This is known. One develops a reputation, or the project comes out shoddy and in the end either it doesn’t turn the profit it might have or more money than is reasonable has to be funneled into it constantly for maintenance. That sort of thing. We don’t value sneakiness, as a house, we value cunning and flexibility.

Lily: Being willing to do anything to achieve your ambition. Sounds like the same thing to me.

Severus: No. _Keeping our options open enough_ to be able to select the _most effective_ tools for a given goal, with, yes, the understanding that sometimes use of that tool may have side effects one must be prepared for. Including disapproval.

Lily: Still sounds like the same thing to me.

Severus: But it isn’t. Even if one looks at it from an utterly sociopathic perspective, most often what could be gained from disreputable behavior is in no way worth it, and working above-board is easier, safer, and brings in dividends of good financial and social relationships and a good reputation. And most Slytherins are normal people who are as affected by praise, warmth, and disapproval as everyone else. _Preferring_ sneakiness as a tactic would just be… moronic.

Lily: But you’re still more willing to use it than people in other houses!

Severus: Cough. Marauders. Cough. Pardon me, werewolf in my throat. Or very nearly. I mean frog.

Lily: …All right, but it was universally acknowledged they were being _bad_.

Severus: Only explicitly. Tacitly they were highly admired. The hooligans in _my_ house were explicitly tolerated and smiled-and-nodded at, but they only got the whole-House invitations to Slughorn’s big holiday parties. You never saw anyone you used to complain to me about at the club meetings, did you.

Lily: God, I would never have gone if Avery and Mulciber had been there.

Severus: See? That wasn’t sneaky of Slughorn. All perfectly visible, broke no rules. Unless you want to argue that sneaky’s the same as understated.

Lily: Well, wait, now I think you’re saying that lying by omission isn’t lying.

Severus: I wasn’t, but I know that it’s not because I’ve been reliably informed that I’m a terrible liar.

Lily: …Wait, what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt for [chapter 59](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080566/chapters/6050075) was _geekery_. Or possibly _Autumn._ Whichever poles your gondola.


	12. Lions and Tigers and Crocodiles, Oh… what?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was posted after [Chapter 84](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4385660/chapters/13549600%22), aka Chapter 12 of Valley Act II, but isn't related to it.
> 
> After such a loooooooooong hiatus, I wanted to take another try at the Newlywed Game, so the prompt was, again, to ask the characters questions about their partners.
> 
> Um, I may have forgotten to tell my beta that. n,n;;

**Psyche_gurl (Ao3):** What kind of games did the Black cousins play as kids?

 

Sirius: … _Games._

Narcissa: Well, there _were_ games…

Evan: Yes, but not, you know, games-kids-play. In the usual sense. As I understand it.

Sirius: Ha, no, yeah, would not call all that games.

Reggie: Quidditch is a game. Quidditch has rules. Games have rules.

Narcissa: Reggie, no one ever said all the games one plays over time have to have the same rules.

Sirius: Yeah, but when you’re playing, say, sardines, if it suddenly occurs to you in the middle of the game that you’ve got lethifold repellant and the wardrobe’s big enough for at least a couple of kids and _you’ve_ got lethifold repellant so it’s fine even if you don’t share, I don’t think it counts as ‘well, the rules didn’t specifically say no fatalities so everything’s cake.’ Just to pick an example at random.

Narcissa: (cross) I _offered_ to share, Siri, I can’t help it if you have the kind of mind that assumes a person is trying to prank you every time they try to be helpful.

Reggie: …Yes, but you did try to say it was fine because we hadn’t put in rules about fatalities, Cissa.

Narcissa: (huffy) Well, we hadn’t.

Evan: (sigh) Well, I suppose Sardines is technically a game, at least before it gets Black all over it.

Narcissa: (brightly) Well, there’s one, then!

Sirius: And I suppose you’re going to say Exploding Snap counts when the explosions are big enough to take down the chandelier?

Narcissa: Oh, that one was not me!

Sirius: Yeah, right. Hardly Bella’s style, Cissy.

Reggie: (coff)

Sirius: (stares) …You didn’t.

Reggie: Er, no, I didn’t, and I don’t know for sure, but that was really, _really_ soon after Severus joined our Quidditch team and, um, Evvie sort of didn’t take his first game very well…

Evan: (sadly) You dislocated his stirring shoulder and hit him in the face with a bat, Siri.

Sirius: (stares)

Sirius: (waves arms explosively) THAT WAS PETER!

Evan: (sadly) You were a collective, and besides, Pettigrew only cared about Spike because he was scared of you.

Sirius: (jaw drop) What—I don’t even— _what_.

Evan: (shrugs)

Sirius: …my beautiful eyebrows…

Evan: ^__^

 

* * *

 **Lupin5th** **(AO3)** : Who beside his father protects Evan from being responsible?

Entire cast: SEVERUS.

Severus: Narcissa.

(beat)

Severus: (grudgingly) …too.

Narcissa: (takes his arm) Well, it is our job, darling. Only you’ve got to get better at letting the idiot men think they _are_ responsible.

Severus: (cheerfully) Oh, but he thinks he’s the one letting me fool myself that I’m wholly responsible while he does the under-the-table managing while I’m not looking; I don’t think we can _both_ do it.

Narcissa: …

Narcissa: EVAN ROSIER IS NOT A BLACK WITCH!

Severus: No, but only because you can’t manage a House when you’ve got tunnel vision.

Narcissa: …Smug doesn’t suit you, darling.

Severus: My face was _made_ for smug.

 

* * *

 **Lurker 2209 (AO3):** If your partner could choose one thing of yours to get rid of, what would they choose?

Evan: (laughing) Oh, either my ‘sloth’ or my waistcoats.

Severus: Your predilection for lazing about in sunbeams in your free times has caused you to hone your efficiency, and is therefore useful.

Evan: (grinning, on to him) Oh, I see.  That's why you tolerate my lazing about in sunbeams.  And when Cissa's cat is lazing about in sunbeams, you never inexplicably and quite coincidentally end up sitting next to _her_ and scritching _her_ belly and getting white fur all over your nice charcoal-y trousers, either.

Severus: (IGNORES) And if you were restricted to sensible waistcoats you’d sulk and talk incessantly about how much more difficult it had become to attract new clients. It would be utter piffle, but you’d believe it.

Evan: OK, what _would_ you get rid of?

Severus: (sniff) If you weren’t as vain as your most lamentable cousin, you first of all would not be so _hung up_ on the damned waistcoats, and secondly you would have at least _tried_ looking like a proper wizard when I expressed an interest in your making the experiment in private, at least.

Evan: (takes a moment to translate this) (protests) What do you mean, a proper wizard? You don’t grow any face-fungus either!

Severus: Hair is wholly unrelated to fungus, unless one’s grooming is abysmal, and _I_ am a brewer. What’s your excuse?

Evan: I’m ginger. It could grown in funny colors and definitely wouldn’t match my hair.

Severus: And I didn’t suggest the experiment for visual reasons, and if you weren’t vain, that possibility would not carry sufficient weight to stop you. I rest my case.

Evan: (sort of amused, sort of neutral) Hmmmmmm. And what do you think I’d get rid of of yours, DF?

Severus: (wary look, then careless shrug) Well, you’ve already dispensed with my native accent, so I suppose it would be my shirt-cuffs.

Evan: (laughing) Oh, _Spike,_ and I gave you _such_ a massive hint, too!

Severus: (baffled)

Evan: (snugs)

* * *

 

 **Psyche_gurl:** How are Narcissa's, Malfoy Sr.'s, Ev's parents', Bellatrix's, McGonnagall, and Flitwick's portraits posed?

 

Evan: Well, Narcissa’s most recent portrait has a top-still of her sitting on that balcony where she likes to have her light meals, with the sun on her hair, looking out over the hedge maze, with her hand doing the pre-mum caressing thing on the pre-Drakelet because it’s a pre-natal. There’s a tea spread, but she’s not doing anything with it, just doing the dreamy-eyes thing, and one of Lucius’s demon birds is perched on the railing. I grew some flowers all around the railing and the edges of the balcony—not paperwhites, though; those aren’t climbers. Blowsy white clematis vines, some pink and blue undertones, no yellow. Makes her hair and her ivory dress robes pop, even with so much pale in the picture.

 

Narcissa: Bella’s most up-to-date portrait is her wedding portrait. She had one like mi—a more recent one, but she burned it. The wedding portrait is lovely, though, in, er, a rustic sort of way. Bowers woven of wood and trees charmed to dovetail their branches together overhead to make a hall, stunned fairies and flitterbies stuck up in them for a bit of sparkle, that sort of thing. Rodolphus’s family is so very country, but they had it in the autumn and did all the decorations with leaves and harvest fruits. It was very Oak King, which suited him beautifully, I must say, much better than anything Mother would have designed for Bella would have done. She did decide to wear white in the end, or I suppose you could call it silver—it was a quite simple sheath, very birch-like, and she had a crown of holly and mistletoe, and a cloak of leaves like fire. Well, I call it a cloak, but they weren’t really _connected,_ you know, they just flowed about her when she moved.

Evvie’s grandfather painted it, and he’s _so_ good, you know. He gave them nearly a quite standard wedding pose for the top-still, with them standing together and Rodolphus holding the handfasting ribbons. But you can see that Rus has rather a silly grin on under his public face, and you can’t quite tell whether they’re about to tie the ribbons or they’ve just taken them off. And he didn’t put Bella standing next to Rodolphus, exactly, he had her turning to him, and even though it’s a still you can very nearly see the leaves swirling. He really is _very_ good; it’s no wonder poor Evvie has a complex.

 

Evan: (blinks) I have a complex?

Narcissa: (pats him) Everyone understands, darling.

Evan: I don’t think I understand…

Severus: No doubt, but even the stupid Sorting Hat understood when you were eleven, so you may well believe that by now everyone else does.

Evan: o.O???

Severus: Although I would not, perhaps, have used that word. …Bellatrix probably has a portrait of herself in her black robes, licking her Mark.

Narcissa: Severus! My sister may be a touch overly dedicated, but she is also unfailingly dignified!

Severus: Which is, we may posit, the reason she hasn’t shown it to anyone.

Narcissa: (cross) Oh, _really_.

 

Callisto: Of course Darius and I have several portraits by now. Our wedding portrait was quite dramatic—Darius’s father posed us standing under the arch at Étretat. No raft or anything like that, of course; I rather suspect the old dear of being more interested in refining his water technique than in painting us. But of course we never intended to _live_ in that one, although it will be nice to have a quite private frame to go swimming in. My favorite, though, is one Darius painted of us. He had to use a mirror, of course, but I’m sure it will be well worth it, if his theory works out. It wasn’t his best composition; we were rather rushed for time, but if I say so myself it was a risk worth taking to paint us after hours in the Ministry Floo Hall.

 

Evan: ...You like that idea, don't you.  You'll let me paint you if we do it there, won't you.

Severus: …That's a great deal of sneaking around to do a portrait in such limited time that it almost ensures your work would not be at its best.  I think we should find out if it works before deciding.

Evan: _We are not waiting for my parents to die before I paint you!!!!!_

 

Lucius: (gloomily) Oh, Father has a perfectly traditional, unexceptional portrait of himself to be hung on the wall with the rest of the family. In his study with his jeweled globe and his books and his papers—and Merlin save us if anyone bothers to read the spines on the books—and a view of the stable and grounds with two of the Abraxans grazing out his window, which is not, incidentally, what his study window actually shows. But he also asked Master Rosier to do one to be put in the tomb-vault—and I wouldn’t have thought anything of that; it’s quite usual to keep a portrait locked away safely that’s meant to be one’s after-life home and not a way to stay in the world.

Only, he asked Rosier into his study to discuss it, and when they came out, well. I’ve seen exactly that look on Evan’s face. He gets it at dinners when someone’s being more gauche than tedious and it’s not the first or second time, and he gets it when Severus rubs the wrong people the wrong way and Evan knows he’s going to have to go sweep up after him. It means ‘I _can_ believe you just said that, which only goes to show that something has gone very wrong with my life.’ I’m rather afraid of that portrait, to be honest.

Severus: That’s not what that look means. At least, not on Evan.

Lucius: (skeptical, wary eyebrow)

Severus: It means ‘I probably shouldn’t think this is funny enough to be worth how troublesome it is, should I. Must not laugh, must not laugh.’

Lucius: Severus?

Severus: Stop helping? 0:->

Lucius: Stop helping. =.=

 

Filius: Oh, I have the usual ‘sitting comfortably in my own sitting room with all my home comforts’ portrait, of course, but I think my favorite is the one that was painted of my first dueling team at the sidewalk tables outside that soda fountain in New York. This was back when you could still get a decent egg cream, you understand, and if you asked for a malted they wouldn’t blink at you stupidly and ask questions about beer. We’d come for a tourney, and we placed well, which was quite an achievement at our ages, I must say! The portraitist put passers-by in the top-still, but the real portrait only has the store-front.

We chose it well, I think—there was the soda fountain, of course, and such a good deli and a bookstore to either side! They’re all gone now, of course—probably parking garages or blocks of flats or some such nonsense. I don’t think that’s even still where Manhattan’s wizarding area is; they do move _about_ so over there.

But it was a lovely day, and now I don’t even mind so much that Witterman _would_ put his elbow on my head. Especially since Weissburg was giving him antennae at the time. Oh, no—I don’t mean that two-fingered ‘bunny-ear’ gesture, I mean actual eighteen-inch antennae. Popped right through his hat, which wasn’t such a loss, if you ask me.

 

Minerva: (sort of half-prim and half-shrugging) I’m sure my portrait wouldn’t interest anyone but my family. My parents had one commissioned when I graduated Hogwarts, and insisted on another when I was hired to work there. I believe there was one when I was a child; I seem to remember being given Bott’s Blocks to play with.

They’re not popular anymore with older children, the Chocolate Frog cards and Zonko’s rather swallowed that market. But they were quite good. Muggles have something similar called Lego; I’ve had students bring some to school, and I encourage the practice, as it’s the sort of thinking one wants in one’s Transfiguration students.The blocks were more versatile, though; they would change their shape and color when you tapped them with the toy wand that you could ask for when you bought a tin.

I don’t remember what the over-picture on that portrait was, or if it had anything to do with the blocks. I do remember being cross because I had to have my hair down for the portrait and it was rather too hot and sticky not to be in plaits.

 

* * *

 

 **Psyche_gurl:** Of the Marauders, who has a portrait so far, and who doesn't, and who wouldn't even think to get one painted? (I was going to ask that question of the Hogwarts faculty and then realized that of course they all have portraits already except Hagrid.)

 

James: Padfoot and I both have a few. And I’ve got the wedding one, of course! (beams)

Sirius: (considers) I _did_ have a few. Might not anymore, of course. Dear old Mumsy was in _such_ a pet.

James: …Well, _that_ is what we call an untenable state of affairs.

Lily: I knew spending time with Sev would be good for you! (innocent, innocent smile)

James: (HACK COFF SPIT GAG HACK)

Lily: (cackles)

Sirius: WELL PLAYED, Amaryllis! XD (high-fives her)

James: (weakly) Traitor…! Water… dying…

Sirius: Pansy.

Lily: I thought I was the whole garden, Sirius?

Sirius: I guess you’ve spread, Knotweed!

Lily: (sticks out tongue) So do Remus and Pete have portraits, then?

James: Well… I haven’t seen them, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. They both have wizarding parents, and at least one set of wizarding grandparents.

Sirius: (darkly) I can think why Remus might not have one.

Lily: (hands fly to mouth) …Do you think it doesn’t work on werewolves?

Sirius: I don’t know, but if he doesn’t know either, I can just see him not wanting to be the test case. I expect he’d rather it not work than that the curse stay with him into the paint. Or at least, he’d probably think that in any of his morbid, melodramatic moods, which are the only ones he’d think about death and therefore portraits in.

James: (facepalms with a resounding smack)

 

* * *

 

 **Psyche_gurl:** What are Reggie's, Peter's, Lucy's, James's, and Selwyn's zodiac signs? What about their Chinese zodiac signs?

 

Narcissa: Oh, let’s see. Selwyn’s a Taurus, of course, and I don’t know Potter’s birthday but I’m _sure_ the charming lad is a Leo…

Sirius: Aries, actually. Taurus cusp.

Narcissa: Equally ugh.

Sirius: How is are either of those worse than Taurus, exactly?

Narcissa: Taurus isn’t an attention-hog, darling.

Sirius: (rolls eyes) Isn’t Reggie a Leo?

Narcissa: No, he only just barely squeaked past it, but he’s every inch a Virgo. I’m sure you must be horribly disappointed.

Sirius: I already knew puss-puss isn’t a lion, Cissy, he got that Sorted years ago. Mummy-dearest might have been; ruined her naming scheme, I suppose.

Narcissa: If she’d had that sort of a naming scheme you’d be called Scorpius, Siri, so count your blessings.

Sirius: I dunno, maybe better that than a dog dangling off Orion’s stupid belt. Let’s see, Pete’s Aquarius… tell me Wilkes is a Virgo, too, _pleaaaaase,_ beautiful irony, come to me, let me have you _…._

Narcissa: (severely) Lucy is a Gemini and you are disgusting.

 

Severus: All of us who were born in 1959 before February 7th are Earth Dogs. Er… of the above named, that’s actually only Pettigrew and Wilkes. Everyone else on that list would be an Earth Pig, I should think, although if my maths are wrong Selwyn might be a Metal Rat.  I didn't actually stick with Divination, you'll recall; I'm getting this from books I'm not entirely sure my hanzi is up to.

Evan: So, so? …Wait, that makes you a dog and me a pig, doesn’t it? (sadface)

Severus: It should come as no surprise to anyone that I was born to be someone’s dog.

Evan: OI. NOT FUNNY.

Severus: I thought it was funny.

Evan: IT WASN’T.

Severus: …Dogs are supposed to incline more towards yang, pigs towards yin… STOP LAUGHING.

Evan: (cannot. stop. laughing) C-c-c-c-obra!

Severus: (sigh) Dog sign is about what one might expect from the name, including traits that make dogs desirable pets, good service animals in leadership roles to humans who need guidance, a realistic outlook that I suppose might correspond to the way a dog lives in the moment, if one wanted to stretch a point, and, of course, a sharp bark and bite.

Evan: Ha!

Severus: Pigs are… er, well, not to put too fine a point on it, Hufflepuff. With just a dash of what Gryffindor thinks it is.

Evan: (devastated face)

Severus: I didn’t make it up.

Evan: It can’t be everyone in the same year has the same sign, though.

Severus: No—just as there are moon signs in Western astrology, there are inner animals in the Chinese zodiac, more lunar determined. These are less about one’s true self than about one’s later years or one’s parents, however. The one that is more like the moon sign in that way is the _secret_ animal, which is determined by the time of one’s birth. And there’s another factor for the day of birth, as well.

Evan: (totally uninterested in the actual question) What are our inner animals, then?

Severus: (also mostly uninterested) Yours is dragon, Reg is a monkey.

Evan: (grins) And you?

Severus: …Ox.

Evan: (grins more)

Severus: (sour face)

Evan: What about your secret animal? No one ever told me what time I was born. Do you know?

Severus: I do.

Evan: And?

Severus: It’s secret.

Evan: xp

 

Sirius: …Nobody is a snake. At all. Nobody. What.

Evan: (scanning the honking enormous book Spike left) Narcissa might be. I think. For the inner thing. She’s a May Taurus, so she could be one, but it says people disagree on the dates so I suppose it depends who you ask.

Sirius: (rolls his eyes) Think she’ll convince anyone she was born on May Day if she holds enough Beltane parties with cake?

Evan: …Honestly? I think she’ll convince almost as many people to believe it as she convinces to pretend they believe it or just never bring it up. Nobody bothers to check records, Siri. Pretty much ever.

Sirius: Yeah, no, you’re not a snake at allllll…

 

* * *

 

 **Psyche_gurl:** (And, if you're willing to do this) what would Evan, Narcissa, Lily (I'll give you that one as a freebie) and Spike's names be in Mandarin?

 

Severus: Wáng Sēnyán: Wáng is a straightforward Prince, and Sēnyán is a word for stern whose syllables are, individually, trees rising above the forest (with connotations of both gloomy and majestic) and… well, strict/rigorous/severe, with components of cries, courage, and cliffs. He wanted to be Lǐnrán (a word for stern that breaks down into ‘burning cold,’ or alternately, ‘coldly disagree’), but eventually Madam Chang made him admit he would probably turn around faster if his name started with an SE sound.

 

Narcissa: Severus made absolutely no attempt to make her name match her English name. She is Bái Èyú, White Crocodile, end of story.

Narcissa disagrees and says that her name is Hēi Syà, which gives her her maiden name intact, and Hēi Syà is enough like ‘Hey, Cissa,’ to catch her attention, and summer is a lovely season, in her opinion.

Especially for secret crocodiles to wear white in. :D

 

Lily: Severus says her Mandarin surname is Èwàn, which he tells her breaks down into _grip_ and _wrist._ He says her Mandarin personal name should be Lìhǔ, upright tiger, which gets the Li sound in there.  And, well, her English name only gets half her appropriate flower’s name in, so the Chinese one can have the other half, and besides, she’s from the big-cat House. She thinks this is lovely. He _hasn’t_ told her that èwàn is an actual word that means ‘disappointment.’

 

Evan: Similarly, he’s told Evan that Qiáng is a word for plant whose only real use is in the longer word rose, and therefore strongly connotes it. And he’s told Evan (whose full first name, Evander, means 'the good man') that Yōuxiān breaks down into 'excellent' and 'progress' or 'first,' which he thinks is a good choice for a Slytherin and the closest to 'good man' that he could find and wasn't completely childish-sounding.  And he hasn’t told Evan that yōuxiān is an actual word that means ‘priority.’

 

* * *

 

 **LittleBabyDamien:** What family tradition, formal or informal, do they miss now they are out of the nest? Are they surprised to miss it? Are you surprised that they miss it?

Severus: I think Evan misses getting smacked on the hand with wooden spoons, because he keeps trying to sneak biscuits when he _knows_ I can see him. And there’s no other possible reason for it, because he also knows the biscuits are 85% percent for his use and sneaking them is wholly unnecessary.

Evan: (innocent) I just like to help you keep alert, Spike.

Severus: (uh-huh look) He also misses taking summer tours with his parents, I’m sure.

Evan: No, I don’t. They were dismal and boring and dreary and _cold_.

Severus: …Well, you’d like to take time away and go do those sorts of things, at any rate, the museums and the sitting all day in front of a landscape and that.

Evan: (puzzled) We did Dartmoor this year, and last winter we went to that ranch in Norway, what are you talking about, missing it? Admittedly, there weren’t a lot of museums at the ranch, but I wouldn’t really have had time for that anyway.

Severus: (pause)

Severus: (slightly colored) But you did like going to Europe, didn’t you?

Evan: (dismissively) Oh, well, yes, it’s a nice climate, or the places Mum and Dad go are, and it’s always better to see things firsthand, but practically everything you can see there, someone’s already been over it at least three times.

Severus: (mouth quirks) Ah. So you have to work three times as hard to find something new to see in it. Lazy.

Evan: Besides, everyone there knows my parents. _And_ my grandparents. _And_ Narcissa and Reggie’s parents and grandparents. Cissa might enjoy spending all her holiday time having tea with people who used to give her sweets and exclaim over her pinafores…

Severus: …Did you wear pinafores? I demand pictures.

Evan: (hastily) Now, in Spike’s case… I have to admit, I’m having a hard time imagining what family rituals he might miss. Don’t get your back up, Spike, it’s partly because I just… well, the only families I grew up spending a lot of time with were Reggie’s and Narcissa’s, and I don’t imagine yours was much like either of theirs.

Severus: (softly) …No, I imagine not.

Evan: (eventually) Any you don’t miss that weren’t completely awful?

Severus: (considers) I used to read with Da when I was small, when I was learning, and there was bedtime reading for a while after that until he started getting bad, and even then in his good spells sometimes it was all right to sit together downstairs and do my work while he read one of his books or watched the telly. I don’t have to miss that. And I don’t really miss cooking with Mam, because I’m better at it than she is now but she’s me Mam, so there’d be all manner of fights about who should be telling whom what to do and we’d drive one another mad. But it was something I liked at the time. And… well, I didn’t like it at the time, it was a bit tense and anxious, actually, but we used to have to… well, see what we could do with the money without starting a fight about it, and get the ‘gifts’ the neighbors gave her for helping them stored away so they wouldn’t be obtrusive, because Da was tetchy about her earning even a non-monetary income when he wasn’t working. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it was one time in a week when I could reliably put my mind to making a useful contribution, even if it wasn’t appreciated when we occasionally got caught at it.

Evan: (deciding sympathy would get him punched in the nose.  Or, well, at least quite hard in the arm) I _thought_ I’d noticed you getting grabby when we do the accounts!

Severus: (loftily) I took maths _and_ arithmancy, and you studied figuring under very spotty tutelage whose only reliable feature was the house elf helping you check your homework.

Evan: Yes, but you have to be very sound on geometry to be a portraitist, Spike.

Severus: That’s as may be, but geometry is not what’s required in balancing a budget, Ev.

 

* * *

 

 **LittleBabyDamien (ffnet):** Happy Birthday Sev!  
Oops. Sorry. Severus. Got a bit carried away there due to attending a lovely birthday party earlier today.  
Two questions, pick one or both. Or neither if you like.  
What flavour cake for their birthday? The birthday girl today chose chocolate AND vanilla AND strawberry, and it made a lovely cake.

 

Severus: (long pause) It isn’t the same from year to year. If I had to lay a bet, it would be on either caramel or cheesecake.

Evan: (considers) Caramel cheesecake sounds good!

Severus: (gags)

Evan: Or turtle, you know, with the nuts and the drizzle on top?

Severus: (gives him a weird look, then mouth quirks) So-ou-up of the evening, beautiful soup.

Evan: (laughing) _No!_ They just call it turtle, I don’t know why. Anyway, your favorites are stranger.

Severus: (smirks) I just like tricking Narcissa into thinking parsnips are delicious and cider is elegant and catching Lucius by surprise when he repeatedly and against all previous history thinks the icing will taste like icing.

Evan: The fennel was weird, but it went well with the parsnippy ‘carrot’ cake, I have to admit, but the pepper icing was just _mean,_ Spike. XD

Severus: (sniffy) It was _my_ birthday.

Evan: (bouncy-sly) I speak severely à Malfoy / I scorn him when he sneezes / For he can thoroughly enjoy / The pepper when he pleases.

Severus: …Oh, how unfortunate, look at the time, we must be going now. (totes him off)

Evan: ^______^

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Severus's cakes are based on actual recipes. I've made cider cake and icing myself, and they are excellent. This should surprise no one who's had cider doughnuts or apple cake, although apple cake is made with orange juice… anyway, just be glad Severus didn't grow up in _American_ poverty with a dad who'd lived through the Depression, or he would have grown up on cake made with Campbell's tomato soup.
> 
> Which I have also made, mostly out of rabid curiosity, and it's actually a really good spice cake that doesn't taste like tomatoes at all.


End file.
